Texas quarterback Matthew Baldwin (6-3 194) committed to Ohio State on Thursday, which may or may not impact the signing of Emory Jones, but the Buckeyes simply couldn’t risk not having a quarterback in the 2018 recruiting class. He was previously committed to Colorado State, where he verbally pledged to play prior to ever starting a game in high school.
Player: Matthew Baldwin (Lake Travis High School/Austin, TX)
Position: Quarterback
Ranking: 247Sports Composite 3-Star, No. 17 Pro-Style QB, No. 436 Player Overall
This was Matthew Baldwin’s first season as a starting quarterback at Lake Travis, which produces quarterbacks like Hostess produces Twinkies. When Baldwin signs later this month, he will become the eighth-consecutive Lake Travis quarterback to sign with an FBS program. The streak began with Todd Reesing, who ended up at Kansas, and also includes future Heisman winner Baker Mayfield, now at Oklahoma.
Baldwin and Lake Travis are still in the Texas 6A state playoffs, but to this point in the season he has thrown for 3,397 yards, completing 71.1% of his pass attempts. He has thrown 41 touchdowns and just six interceptions in 308 pass attempts. He also leads the team in rushing with 395 yards and eight touchdowns on the ground.
Baldwin has completed over 80% of his passes in three of his last four games. In the fourth game of the season against Hendrickson, he completed 27-of-30 pass attempts for 340 yards with five touchdowns. The following week against Hays, he completed 22-of-27 passes for 459 yards with seven touchdowns and an interception. He has completed over 80% of his passes in six of Lake Travis’ 12 games this season.
Don’t let the recruiting rankings fool you, Baldwin simply hasn’t been on the radar long enough to create a large enough blip. That is changing, however. Even Alabama was poking around in the last week or so.
What Ohio State sees — and what other schools have seen after OSU saw it — is that Baldwin is a quarterback who can make any throw you could want from him. His completion percentage suggests a majority of short passes, but his highlights showcase an accuracy both on the move and downfield — and sometimes both together.
Baldwin also had a game where he rushed for over 100 yards this season, so he’s got enough mobility to do what Ohio State likes to do.
The Comparison
It may be a cop-out, but Matthew Baldwin has characteristics of each of OSU’s four current quarterbacks. He has similar mobility to a fifth-year senior J.T. Barrett. He’s not the fastest guy, but has the agility to make a man miss and pull away from the first line of defense. He does also possess enough giddy up to catch defenders off guard if they underestimate him.
He is similar to Joe Burrow in his size and accuracy. Burrow completed a very high percentage of his passes, and some of that was due to short passes, but Burrow would also send plenty of passes downfield. Both quarterbacks are incredibly confident in their respective accuracy. That confidence in his arm is also an attribute of Dwayne Haskins. Haskins believes he can fit the football into any window, and Baldwin is right there with him.
The similarities to Tate Martell are two-fold. One, both quarterbacks have tremendous accuracy when throwing on the run. They almost prefer it. Two, both simply have a knack for winning. Martell won three national titles at Bishop Gorman, which Baldwin obviously can’t match, but he was the backup on Lake Travis’ state champion team last year. Baldwin was called upon a couple of critical times last season, including in a 59-56 overtime win over eventual state finalist Cibolo Steele.
The Fit
Well, if the comparisons are all current Ohio State quarterbacks, that should give you a pretty good idea of how well Matthew Baldwin fits in this offense. Some might say that the Buckeyes would be better off with a more mobile quarterback, but there is no reason why Baldwin can’t do what Dwayne Haskins does with his legs. Sometimes all you need is that critical 20-odd yard run down to the 1-yard line against Michigan. And anyway, if he was too much of a runner, that may take away from what the Buckeyes are building in the backfield.
In terms of what the Buckeyes do in the passing game, Baldwin can handle all of that. He is already incredibly accurate on the back-shoulder throws. He has no problem throwing deep, especially on the roll out. He is tall enough to stand in the pocket, and he keeps his eyes up when there is pressure coming. Given his arm downfield, we can only assume it’s strong enough for the quick screens out wide as well.
The Future
And here is where things get interesting. If the Buckeyes didn’t go after Matthew Baldwin and then Emory Jones decided to sign elsewhere, the Buckeyes would enter spring camp with Dwayne Haskins, Joe Burrow, and Tate Martell. Burrow graduates in May and if he doesn’t think he has a shot to start following an entire spring camp, then he can transfer without having to sit out a year, leaving just Haskins and Martell as scholarship quarterbacks. Urban Meyer couldn’t allow that to happen, so they had to make a move on Baldwin.
Even if Emory Jones had reassured the staff that he is going to be a Buckeye, adding another quarterback in this class was still the right move, because three quarterbacks is also not ideal. This all means that Ohio State will now have somewhere between three and five quarterbacks on next fall’s roster, but they just had to make sure it would be more than two.
Prior to Baldwin’s commitment, things were looking good for OSU and Jones, but this offer was as much about necessity as it was insurance. Baldwin is planning on signing early and enrolling early.
Matthew Baldwin Highlights
[Matthew Baldwin photo courtesy 247Sports.com]