COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio State dominated the Big Ten’s quarterback discussion even before Ryan Day showed up trying to turn it into the nation’s top spot for the position, but 2024 needs to be about re-establishing that fact.
Ahead of the 2011 season, the Big Ten established a series of player awards for individual positions, using them to honor players from the past. The quarterback award was named after former Purdue quarterbacks Bob Griese and Drew Brees. Russell Wilson won the inaugural award following his lone season at Wisconsin, then OSU’s stranglehold on it began the following season with second-year starter Braxton Miller playing for first-year head coach Urban Meyer.
It’s been 13 years since the award’s introduction and last season was just the third time a Buckeye wasn’t its recipient. It was also the first time that one couldn’t make the argument that the reason why they didn’t win wasn’t at least partially in their control.
J.J. McCarthy beat out Kyle McCord for it last season simply because he was clearly the better quarterback, without any added context behind it. That has never happened before. For the sake of OSU’s conference and national title hopes, it needs to make sure that doesn’t repeat itself.
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When Wilson won it in 2011, he undoubtedly deserved it. He was the Badgers’ first NFL-level quarterback in years, putting up 3,175 yards and 33 touchdowns with a 72.5 completion percentage. He also led them to a win in the conference’s inaugural championship game. But it wasn’t like Ohio State was positioned to put up an actual fight.
Terrelle Pryor should’ve been going into his fourth year of college football and fourth year as a starter playing under Jim Tressel. But “Tattoogate” changed all of that. Tressel was replaced by Luke Fickell in an interim role while Joe Bauserman started at quarterback for Pyror, who chose the NFL over serving a five-game suspension in college.
That season was destined to fail to the point that five-star freshman Braxton Miller quickly took over QB1 duties with a chance to give the program’s future a head start, while trying to make the most of what was clearly a lost season.
That team finished 6-7, the first losing record since 1988, and suffered the first loss to Michigan since 2001. Miller was one of the few bright lights with 1,874 total yards, 20 touchdowns and winning Freshman of the Year.
Then Meyer showed up and Ohio State’s quarterback supremacy couldn’t even be halted by Miller’s season-ending injury, which thrust J.T. Barrett into the starting role in 2014.
The next non-Buckeye to win it was Connor Cook at Michigan State in 2015, a year where the Buckeyes spent the first half of the season playing quarterback musical chairs. They were trying to figure out if Barrett should start as the reigning Big Ten QB of the year responsible for Ohio State even being in a position to win a Big Ten or national title, or if Cardale Jones should have it as the guy who actually finished the job.
That mismanagement mixed with the Spartans’ win inside Ohio Stadium is why Cook got the award. He was good — 3,131 yards and 24 touchdowns — but if OSU just picks a guy at the start of the year, mixed with the talent on that roster it’s hard to envision a world where whoever becomes the starter it doesn’t get the award.
Barret reclaimed his award for the next two years even if the overall quarterback play wasn’t necessarily elite. Then Day’s new quarterback world arrived in 2018 with Dwayne Haskins rewriting the school and conference record books, setting a new standard. Justin Fields and C.J. Stroud followed up as the first two signal callers with Day as head coach.
Big Ten’s Griese–Brees QB of the Year winners
| Year | Winner, School |
|---|---|
| 2011 | Russell Wilson, Wisconsin |
| 2012 | Braxton Miller, Ohio State |
| 2013 | Braxton Miller, Ohio State |
| 2014 | J.T. Barrett, Ohio State |
| 2015 | Connor Cook, Michigan State |
| 2016 | J.T. Barrett, Ohio State |
| 2017 | J.T. Barrett, Ohio State |
| 2018 | Dwayne Haskins, Ohio State |
| 2019 | Justin Fields, Ohio State |
| 2020 | Justin Fields, Ohio State |
| 2021 | C.J. Stroud, Ohio State |
| 2022 | C.J. Stroud, Ohio State |
| 2023 | J.J. McCarthy, Michigan |
At that point, you’d look a the quarterback recruiting and just assume that the award might as well find a permanent home in Columbus. But even as a former five-star McCord didn’t live up to that expectation, ending up on third-team All-Big Ten behind McCarthy and former Maryland quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa.
McCord is the only full-time starter at Ohio State to never win the award.
Now the award is getting a restart. None of last season’s All-Big Ten quarterbacks are in the conference anymore, with McCord (Syracuse) being the only one that’s still in college. There is no frontrunner for it. The biggest returning name is probably Penn State’s Drew Allar, who has the recruiting pedigree but didn’t have the most productive first year as a starter in 2023.
The conference’s newcomers bring with them some interesting storylines. Oregon brought in former Oklahoma quarterback Dylan Gabriel, who right now is probably considered the conference’s best quarterback based on his five years of experience and production. Lincoln Riley is already an established name in quarterback development. Thanks to a bad 2023 season at USC, his presumed starter, Miller Moss, got to use a six-touchdown Holiday Bowl performance to build momentum as he succeeds Caleb Williams.
That’s the start of the conversation when discussing who the biggest threats are to Ohio State as it tries to reclaim something it practically owned for a decade.
The Buckeyes have five options to choose from to help reclaim the award: Kansas State transfer Will Howard, third-year Devin Brown, second-year Lincoln Kienholz and five-star freshmen Julian Sayin and Air Noland.
Howard and Brown are the most likely candidates to come out of this battle as the winner, and their job is proving Ohio State still belongs at the top of the hierarchy. But that was a much easier task back in 2011 when this award was first introduced.
The Big Ten’s quarterback floor has been raised in part because the Buckeyes made it clear that was required to compete with them. As that floor continues to rise, they must make sure they continue to be the ones determining the ceiling.
As the schedule has it, they’ll get on the field with every team that is realistically equipped to challenge them for that title. Re-establishing themselves as “Kings of the North” may end up being the deciding factor for a program that’s made it clear it’s completely all in on the idea of “natty or bust.”
A new era of quarterback play has arrived in the Big Ten with Ohio State being the catalyst for why we got here. With it, provides another chance to remind the rest of the conference of that.
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