In the middle of a three-man quarterback competition between Joe Burrow, Dwayne Haskins, and Tate Martell, Urban Meyer went into radio silence.
Not by diabolical design, mind you, but due instead to a media schedule that has dozens of moving parts.
Meyer last met with reporters on April 2 and said at the time, “You’d wish one would take it, but then again, you like having the day-to-day competition, which is what I’m seeing.”
The Ohio State football team has had four practices since that statement, which means plenty could have changed since then.
On Wednesday, Meyer spoke with the media for the first time since April 2 by taking part in the Big Ten coaches spring teleconference, and as it turns out, nothing has changed.
“All three are close,” he said. “There are times you wish that you’d have one guy separate. It’s certainly not because of poor performance. It’s because all three want the job. Some decisions are going to have to be made. Right now I can’t name a ‘one.’ I can’t even name a ‘three.’ Today was probably their best practice, all three of them combined. Yeah, this is three good ones.”
Previously, Meyer has said that he owes Joe Burrow an answer about the starting job by the end of spring. Meyer wanted to be able to make a decision, and now that looks like it may not be happening.
“I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, and a lot of things I won’t share with everyone else on what’s going on in-house,” he said. “I’ve been in worse situations where you don’t have one. So we just have to do right by the team and do right by the player.”
As Meyer said, the Buckeyes could be in worse situations. Ohio State currently has three quarterbacks who are all playing well, but somebody still needs to step forward if a decision is going to be made this spring.
If nobody separates himself, then a decision will have to be made based on the evidence at hand. Scores will be tallied, intangibles will be measured.
In the end, Meyer believes that he has three quarterbacks who can lead this offense to his liking. Eventually.
“Not yet. I think in due time, yes. Not yet,” he said. “Obviously, it’s still early. We don’t play for another few months, and they’ve got to go through the summer training and then training camp. But with the proper development, yes.”
The Buckeyes have two practices left this spring, so more data will be fed into the Ohio State football computers. Will it spit out a winner? Good question.