Year of the Quarterback, Part 6. Why Joe Burrow never found the field at Ohio State

Editor's note: Steve Doerschuk spent months researching quarterbacks. The result is three waves of a series, "Year of the Quarterback." The first wave revolves around tremendous high school quarterbacks fighting to find the field in college. This is the sixth article in the first wave.

It's hard to find the field in college.

Even for Mr. Football .

At the start ...

You were the best quarterback your high school has ever seen. You won the award given to the best player in Ohio. Your college options were immense.

And then ...

Some combination of competition, circumustance, injury, coaching caprice, roster arrivals and tough luck turn you into Plan B.

Joe Burrow is Exhibit A. He was Ohio Mr. Football for 2014.

He starred at Athens High School, a few miles from where his dad, Jim, was an assistant coach for the Ohio University Bobcats.

Young Joe came out of junior high billed as a basketball whiz. His football side caught up when he threw 47 touchdown passes an Athens sophomore.

From 2012-14, the football Bulldogs scored like the hoops squad, topping 50 points 27 times.

Before Burrow's senior year, on the first day Urban Meyer urged him to come to Ohio State, it was a quick yes.

Upon committing, Burrow told the Columbus Dispatch, "I can't just bust out a 4.3-second 40 like Braxton Miller, but I think by next year, I'll be able to legitimately compete for playing time."

An enegized Burrow dove into his senior season and came out with 63 TD passes, versus just two interceptions.

The last splash came in the 2014 OHSAA Division III state finals. Burrow's Bulldogs lost 56-52 to Toledo Central Catholic, but a 446-yard, six-touchdown day only swelled his reputation.

Central Catholic coach Greg Dempsey, reminiscing several years later, told the Cincinnati Enquirer, "He was already a legend."

It was as if unseen forces were working up Buckeyes magic.

There hadn't been a state championship game in Ohio Stadium, home of the Buckeyes, in 25 years. There was Burrow, in his last game before becoming a Buckeye, lighting up "The Horseshoe" on a Thursday night.

Two days later, Ohio State smashed Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Championship Game. The Buckeyes went on to win the national championship.

It turned out there was no chance Burrow would start in 2015 as a true freshman, since J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones returned from the national title team.

Barrett, from Wichita Falls, Texas, arrived in Columbus in 2013, when the starter was Miller, a third-year Buckeye from the Dayton area.

Miller left the equation with a shoulder injury that caused him to sit out 2014.

Barrett landed the starting job and got on a roll that lasted all the way to the Michigan game, in which he broke an ankle.

Jones, a third-year Buckeye from Cleveland, took the reins in wins over Michigan, Wisconsin, Alabama and Oregon, which left the Buckeyes kings of college football in Meyer's third season.

Here's what glued Burrow to the Buckeyes bench after that.

Ohio State 2015: Cardale Jones and J.T. Barrett split time at quarterback

Miller returned from his year off and agreed to move to H-back. Playing time at quarterback was split evenly between Jones, who attempted 175 passes, and Barrett, who attempted 147.

Jones regressed. Barrett got suspended for one game after a DUI arrest. Yet, the Buckeyes were 10-0 when Barrett faced No. 9 Michigan State. He had a rough game in a 17-14 defeat, the only loss in a 12-1 year.

A week after the exasperating loss, Barrett went the distance in a 42-13 win at Michigan.

Burrow sat and took a redshirt.

Ohio State 2016: J.T. Barrett is QB1, with Joe Burrow as QB2

Jones and Miller left for the NFL, but Barrett was back.

Burrow moved up to No. 2, but he appeared only in a few blowouts, in which he completed 22 of 28 passes.

Barrett's third straight win over Michigan, 17-16, put the Buckeyes in the national semifinals, where they took an embarrassing 31-0 loss to a Clemson team quarterbacked by Deshaun Watson.

Ohio State 2017: J.T. Barrett remains starter, Dwayne Haskins emerges

Again, Barrett was back, the leader of a team ranked No. 2 in the USA in the preseason.

Burrow came out of spring as the top backup, but he broke a hand days before the opener, elevating Dwayne Haskins, a second-year Buckeye from Maryland, to No. 2.

In Game 2, the home opener, Baker Mayfield outplayed Barrett in a loss to No. 5 Oklahoma.

Barrett rebounded and delivered a career game in a 39-38 win over No. 2 Penn State that got the Buckeyes to 7-1, but a 55-24 loss at unranked Iowa a week later wrecked the season.

Burrow made it back in September and got mop-up work in four blowouts, but only after Haskins logged more extensive shifts in relief of Barrett.

Midway through the Michigan game, Haskins, not Burrow, replaced an injured Barrett. Haskins broke a long run that set up a touchdown providing a 21-20 lead. He went 6-for-7 passing in a 31-20 win.

In the course of a 12-2 season, Burrow threw 11 passes, compared to Haskins' 57.

Ohio State 2018: Dwayne Haskins wins QB1 job, Joe Burrow transfers to LSU

Barrett was gone. Haskins, Burrow and Tate Martell, a second-year Buckeye from Las Vegas, were the candidates to replace him.

In the spring game, Burrow went 15-of-22 for 238 yards. Haskins went 9-of-19 for 120 yards. Martell played his way out of the conversation.

"I saw Burrow and Haskins go at it in that game," said Don Hertler Jr., a respected quarterback analyst who was a QB and a head coach at North Canton Hoover. "I thought Haskins was a little better.

"That was just one day out of numerous days, and they weren't hitting the quarterback. You can't tell in a spring game what a guy would do when a play breaks down. Joe Burrow has been really really good at that."

After the spring game, Burrow said, "I think this spring I played just about as well as I could. I’ve put my heart and soul into it, and if I were to leave it would be pretty devastating for me."

Meyer preferred Haskins, revering his arm talent. Three weeks after the spring game, Burrow transferred to LSU.

The Buckeyes went 13-1 behind Haskins, but a strange 49-20 loss at unranked Purdue kept them out of the playoffs. Meyer resigned after the season. Burrow was just warming up.

Ohio State quarterbacks 2015-18 postscript

How did football life work out for these Ohio State QBs?

• Braxton Miller went to Houston in Round 3 of the 2016 draft and changed positions. He gave the Texans 34 catches in 21 games before he was cut. His NFL career basically ended in a 10-day trial with the Browns in the 2019 preseason.
• J.T. Barrett went 38-6 as the Buckeyes' starter but wasn't drafted in 2018. He spent time in the camps of the Saints, Seahawks and Steelers but never appeared in an NFL regular-season game.

• The Bills drafted Cardale Jones in Round 4 in 2016. He played in the season finale but was traded to the Chargers before he 2017 season and never appeared in another NFL game.
• Dwayne Haskins ' only season as Ohio State's starter was 2018. Drafted 15th overall by Washington, he started 13 games during the 2019 and 2020 seasons and then was released. He spent 2021 as Pittsburgh's No. 3 QB. The Steelers re-signed him on March 16, 2022. Three weeks later, he died after being hit by a truck while crossing a highway on foot.
• Tate Martell , relieving Haskins in a 2018 blowout of Rutgers, had a day in the sun, scrambling for a 47-yard touchdown and completing all 10 of his passes. He transferred to Miami (Florida) in 2019 and to UNLV in 2021. He announced his retirement from football on Jan. 18, 2022.
• In 2018 at LSU, Joe Burrow beat three top-10 teams in his first seven starts. In 2019, he passed for 5,671 yards and 60 TDs, winning the Heisman Trophy on a 15-0 national championship team.

Burrow was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 draft. He quarterbacked the Bengals to the Super Bowl in his second season. His play led to a five-year, $275 million contract extension last September.

A 2023 USA Today article ranking the best LSU players of all time put Burrow at No. 1 and noted, "It was probably rather obvious."

Since 2000, seven other quarterbacks were Ohio Mr. Football. Here's how things went for those award winners in college.

2021 winner, Drew Allar, Medina

The 6-5, 240-pound Allar chose Penn State, which offered him a scholarship well before Ohio State did.

As a true freshman in 2022, he played frequently in relief of starter Sean Clifford.

Allar started in 2023 ahead of Beau Pribula , Pennsylvania's 2021 6A high school player of the year.

He got eaten up in losses of 20-12 at Ohio State and 24-15 to Michigan, and he left a game against Rutgers with an injury, but he didn't miss a start in a 10-3 year ending with a bowl loss to Mississippi.

Allar remains ahead of Pribula heading into a 2024 season that includes games against Bowling Green, Kent State and Ohio State.

2019 winner, Evan Prater, Cincinnati Wyoming

As a senior, Prater led the Wyoming Cowboys to a 13-1 season one year after winning a state title on a 15-0 team. He signed with the University of Cincinnati as the transfer portal era took hold.

He sat for two years while Desmond Ridder took the Bearcats to the 2021 national semifinals. Prater's chance to replace Ridder in 2022 was usurped by a traveling man, Ben Bryant.

Bryant had spent three years as a Bearcats backup before transferring to Eastern Michigan, where he did well in a "prove-it" 2022 season. He returned to Cincinnati and started in 2023.

After Scott Satterfield replaced coach Luke Fickell in '23, Bryant transferred to Northwestern. The new No. 1 QB was Emory Jones, who made previous stops at Florida and Arizona State.

Prater converted to wide receiver in 2023 and is on the '24 roster at that position. Transfer Brendan Sorsby, who started for seven games for Indiana in '23, is the Bearcats projected QB1 in '24.

2017 winner, Joey Baughman, Wadsworth

During a 10-0 regular season at Wadsworth in 2017, Baughman's Grizzlies never scored less than 41 points.

College offers were sparse, though, and he committed to Virginia as a wrestler. He thought twice and accepted a football offer from Elon, an NCAA Division I FCS program in North Carolina.

At Elon, he spent his days behind North Carolina natives Davis Cheek and Matthew McKay.

2012 winner, Mitch Trubisky, Mentor

As a junior, Trubisky led Mentor to the third round of the playoffs, where the Cardinals lost a close game to eventual state champion Cleveland St. Ignatius.

He committed to North Carolina before his senior year and then led Mentor to playoff wins of 63-56 over St. Edward and 57-56 over Ignatius.

At North Carolina, Trubisky sat as a freshman but got playing time the next two years behind Charlotte native Marquise Williams. He then started in 2016, when he threw for 3,748 yards on a Tar Heels team ranked as high as No. 15.

The Chicago Bears drafted him at No. 2 overall in 2017, bypassing Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. Trubisky posted a 25-13 record with the Bears from 2018-20, then got a chance to start for the Steelers in 2022, but he was benched soon after a Game 3 loss at Cleveland.

He signed with Buffalo in March and is projected as Josh Allen's top backup.

2011 winner, Maty Mauk, Kenton

The 6-0 Mauk lost a 48-42 thriller to Norwayne in the 2011 Division IV state final. He left Kenton with a national-record 18,932 career passing yards.

Coach Gary Pinkel brought him to Missouri, where, in 2014, he started and led the Tigers to the SEC Championship Game against Alabama.

Mauk was suspended twice during the next season, after which he transferred to Eastern Kentucky, where he did not play.

2007 winner, Bart Tanski, Mentor

In 2006, Tanski beat Massillon in the regular season and McKinley in the state semifinals. In 2007, he led the Cardinals to a second straight trip to the Division I state final.

He walked on at Bowling Green, where he changed positions, to wide receiver. He never caught a pass.

2002 winner, Ben Mauk, Kenton

Maty Mauk's brother was a senior when he threw for a national single-season record of 6,540 yards while leading Kenton to a second straight Division IV state championship.

At Wake Forest, he passed for 1,522 yards in spot duty over three seasons. He transferred to Cincinnati and started in 2007, when he passed for 31 touchdowns in leading the Bearcats to a top-20 finish.

Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Year of the Quarterback, Part 6. Why Joe Burrow never found the field at Ohio State