The Ohio State football team just added some badly-needed depth in its quarterback room.
Chris Chugunov, a graduate transfer from West Virginia, has now officially joined the Buckeyes. He has two years of eligibility left.
Chugunov played in eight career games with the Mountaineers, including the final three of the 2017 season. He replaced injured starter Will Grier at Texas, then started the regular season finale at Oklahoma and the Heart of Dallas Bowl against Utah.
The Mountaineers lost all three of those games. Chugunov completed 47.8 percent of his passes in 2017 for 536 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions.
He will wear jersey No. 4 for the Buckeyes.
An OSU spokesman was unsure whether Chugunov will be a scholarship player for OSU this fall.
The Buckeyes were already at the NCAA-mandated limit of 85 scholarship players before adding him. If he is a walk-on, he would not count against that number.
Chugunov provides Ohio State with an experienced backup for this season. The Buckeyes entered fall camp with only three scholarship quarterbacks; redshirt sophomore Dwayne Haskins, redshirt freshman Tate Martell, and true freshman Matthew Baldwin.
With Baldwin still not 100 percent recovered from an ACL injury he suffered during high school, the depth chart was dangerously thin heading into the year.
Chugunov provides not only depth, but also experience in the quarterback room. However, with less than a week to go before the season opener against Oregon State, he’s not likely to see meaningful playing time early in the season.
He will probably open the season as either the third or fourth-string quarterback, behind Haskins and Martell. However, if disaster strikes and both of those players are unavailable for an extended period of time, he could help the Buckeyes protect Baldwin’s redshirt.
Chugunov was a 2015 recruit out of Montgomery High School in Skillman, N.J.
He was rated as the 46th-best pro-style quarterback in his class.
This highlights a short coming shared by both Tressell and Meyer.
Neither of them gave back-up QN’s enough game time. In 2014 there were plenty of games where Cardale could have played the entire 4th quarter. Similarly, last season Haskin and martell could have each played several entire quarters without affecting the outcome of the games.
This is good. Another QB with playing experience is a good thing for our young quarterbacks.