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The 3 best first-year starting QBs in recent Ohio State football history

The Ohio State football team has had some good first-year QBs under Ryan Day. With Will Howard likely to do the same, we rank the first-year QBs in the Ryan Day era.

By Ryan Stano

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The Ohio State football team has had some really good quarterback play since Ryan Day has been on staff. For a while, it seemed like every QB he had was getting drafted in the first round. Day looked like he could do no wrong and whatever QB he chose was turning into gold.

Then, last year happened. Kyle McCord was just fine, nothing special. It was a season that saw the Buckeyes lose to Michigan for the third-straight year and then get embarrassed in a bowl game. McCord is now gone and Will Howard is likely going to take his place.

Howard will likely be a first-time starter for Ohio State, but it won't be his first time starting in college football. He has plenty of collegiate starting experience from his time at Kansas State. That's not the case for most of the quarterbacks that Day has had to play.

Today, we look at the three best seasons under Day when he had a first-year starting quarterback. We start with the 2021 season that saw the guy under center finish the season by throwing six touchdown passes.

3. C.J. Stroud

C.J. Stroud had a rough start to his Ohio State football career. He lost his first start at home against Oregon and then had to sit out the next game due to an injury. Everyone was questioning whether or not he was the right guy to be leading the Buckeyes after he won a fierce QB battle.

Things changed after that. He played extremely well for the rest of the season and that culminated when he threw for 573 yards and 6 touchdowns. Overall on the season, he finished with 4,435 yards and 44 touchdowns. It was a great display of passing even though he lost two games.

Stroud ended up being the second overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft and was the Offensive Rookie of the Year. He led the Houston Texans to the playoffs in his first year under center and has an even better team this season. Quite frankly, he should have been the first overall pick.

Unfortunately, Stroud was never able to beat Michigan in his career. That's something that will always be attached to him, for better or for worse. I tend to think that neither of those losses was his fault, but he still has to own them. He still had a great year in 2021.

The next player on our list was actually the first starting quarterback that Ryan Day coached way back when he was an offensive coordinator.

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