It has been two weeks since the J.T. Barrett Era came to a close at Ohio State, which means we are now two weeks into a new era of Buckeye quarterbacks.
The era is still shrouded in some mystery, however, because the competition likely won’t be completely over until sometime in September.
The veteran of the group is Joe Burrow, entering his fourth year at Ohio State. He will be graduating after spring camp. The young upstart is Tate Martell, who spent his time in 2017 earning respect on the scout team. The man with the momentum, however, is Dwayne Haskins, who came to the rescue this season at Michigan as a redshirt freshman.
Haskins completed 6-of-7 passes for 94 yards in leading the Buckeyes to a come-from-behind win in the Big House. It was a pressure-packed moment, but Haskins was able to take it in stride.
“The poise that I had to come in there like that, I wasn’t expecting to get in that game,” he said recently. “Having to do what I had to do to get the win and help the team out, I thought it was pretty mature for me to go do that.”
There are few better ways to showcase maturity for a quarterback than to come into a game trailing in the second half against your rival and lead the offense to four scoring opportunities on all four drives. But that is exactly what Dwayne Haskins did. Nerves never got to him, and when it comes to playing in the games, they have yet to impact his performance.
There are times when he does get nervous, however.
“Maybe in practice when coach Meyer and coach Day are down my neck, but in the game, you’ve got to just go out there and play,” he said. “Can’t worry about what the coaches say. I don’t really tend to get too nervous. Coaches, players rely on you to see your demeanor, see your energy. If you look nervous, then they’ll play nervous. So you’ve just got to be confident.”
Haskins displayed that confidence against Michigan, and his teammates know now that he is plenty capable of leading this offense moving forward.
Haskins is also very confident in his teammates and likes the possibilities of what the 2018 OSU offense could do.
“Mostly everybody’s coming back, so just another year of maturity, another year of working out in the season and offseason, I think we’ll be really good if we can get that camaraderie together,” he said.
As we have seen throughout Urban Meyer’s tenure, the offense will go as far as the quarterback can take it. Haskins wants that opportunity, and knows the weight that the responsibility would carry.
“It would mean everything to me,” he said. “I just want to go get it.”