Ohio State's QB battle is for real - but is it a concern?

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9 hours ago

Josh Pate previews the Buckeyes' 2025 season and explains why the battle between Julian Sayin and Lincoln Kienholz for the starting quarterback job needs to be settled early in training camp. Subscribe to 'Josh Pate's College Football Show' on YouTube.
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Video Transcript
Uh, what about Ohio State?
Every spring these days we have to parse through the quarterback competitions.
Some of them are for show, some of them are for real, and this Ohio State quarterback competition has been for real.
That's Julian Say and that's Lincoln Kinholtz.
Kinholtz's probably a better athlete.
He's not probably, he's a better athlete than Julian.
He probably gives you a more dynamic threat with his legs.
Uh, I have thought and still think Julian Say is gonna win this job, but it doesn't matter what I think because I think the Ohio State coaching staff believes he's gonna win the job.
He's got to take the job and he hasn't taken the job yet.
That's the beauty of competition.
It does not matter and what you get yourself into the longer this goes.
I mean, I'm looking at quotes from Ryan Day.
This is gonna go down to the wire.
I don't think he's BSing.
I think he's being dead honest about that.
What you run the risk of is they play Texas week one.
It's not a layup game in week one.
And so what happens is you could think one thing for 7 or 8 months.
Like I thought Julian Say is gonna win this job for 7 or 8 months.
You know what that's worth?
Nothing.
And I take you back to what was it?
It was Jalen Hurts and Blake Barnett several years ago for Bama.
That was the same dynamic there.
That dynamic was Barnett was a former 5-star quarterback like these days you say who, but back then he was a former 5-star quarterback and all throughout spring he had a leg up on this Jalen Hurts kid from Channel View, Texas.
No one really knew much about him yet.
And then in summer like Hurts is working his tail off, still think it's gonna be Barnett's job.
Fall camp, you know, Barnett's taking reps with the ones he's gonna start against USC, but I mean Jalen Hurts may get a couple series and people talk about it like it's a movie script.
No, it's competition.
It's raw competition.
Well, here's what happened.
What happened was Blake Barnett, if you've ever seen a deer in headlights and I grew up in the country, so I've seen several, you know what that game was like for him if you haven't ever seen one.
Don't go out looking for a deer, um, and don't turn, don't turn your brights on, just go watch the replay; Barnett had no shot.
Then Jalen Hurts comes in, and Hurts took the job.
The point being, everything you said and you thought over a six, seven, eight month period evaporated in the span of a quarter or two.
You run the risk of that happening here.
The longer this goes without them naming a starter, you run the risk of that happening.
Also, on an unrelated note, it sounds like they're pretty high on their tailback room, and they need to be for reasons I just stated, and also because Ohio State never wins if they can't run the ball.
They do need to get offensive tackle settled there.
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