ARLINGTON, Texas — Devin Brown hobbled over to Lincoln Kienholz and wrapped his arms around him. Brown whispered some words of affirmation into the freshman quarterback’s ear, patted him on the chest and then stumbled toward Ohio State’s tunnel. His limp was strong.
After Kyle McCord transferred to Syracuse, the Cotton Bowl was supposed to be Brown’s night, his opportunity to play four quarters of inspired football to show Ryan Day and the Ohio State football program that he was the quarterback of the future.
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Day was going to use the Cotton Bowl to evaluate Brown’s ability and Ohio State’s quarterback room heading into the offseason. It was supposed to help Day make an informed decision about how to proceed: Transfer portal or no transfer portal?
The Cotton Bowl, instead, turned into a disaster for Ohio State.
The Buckeyes lost to Missouri, 14-3, after Brown was injured early in the second quarter. Brown tried to come back into the game on the following possession, but it was apparent he wouldn’t be able to play through it. He left the game and never came back. The Buckeyes turned to Kienholz, who hasn’t been in the program long enough to run a complete, effective offense. They finished with 203 total yards and converted two of 15 third downs.
The game was horribly ugly. And how to fix issues becomes immeasurably more complicated.
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How is Day going to evaluate who should be Ohio State’s quarterback heading into an offseason with nothing to evaluate?
“I don’t have a great answer for that right now because this isn’t what we expected,” Day said after the game. “We didn’t have a game to look at, go through and evaluate. We know what we see in practice, but it’s different in a game. It’s so disappointing we don’t have that. We will go back to work and figure that part out. I don’t have an answer, though, because we didn’t get a game in.”
What makes Day’s decision so difficult is that Brown, a top-50 player nationally in the 247Sports Composite in the 2022 recruiting class, illustrates everything you’d want in a starting quarterback. The way he handled himself after another devastating injury is commensurate with the type of leader Ohio State has traditionally had at the quarterback position.
Even with Ohio State down in the fourth quarter and Brown sitting there helpless as his team struggled to get first downs, the large video board in AT&T Stadium zoomed in on his face on the sideline. He was cheering on Kienholz like he was the freshman quarterback.
Even when McCord beat him out for the job after preseason camp, Brown’s temperament was never about hitting the transfer portal or skipping out on the program. Yes, he suffered an injury that kept him out of the second half of the season, but he was always going to stay with the program for his next chance to compete.
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Day couldn’t say with certainty that McCord would hold onto the starting job in 2024. McCord entered the transfer portal and ended up at Syracuse. Now was Brown’s time to take over this team. And just like in spring practice and during the regular season, Brown suffered an injury that stopped him from competing on the full stage.
Yet you didn’t see Brown feeling sorry for himself. You saw him being an incredible teammate, which is likely the reason the entire Ohio State roster seemed to have rallied around him during bowl season.
But can he play?
“Devin wanted to play in this game more than anybody,” Day said. “After he hurt himself, he wanted to get back in, but it wasn’t fair to him — he couldn’t move. He wasn’t supposed to be in the game at that point. He kept a great attitude the whole time. He’s a great young man and a great teammate.”
Ohio State is in a frustrating stretch. It concluded its regular season with its third consecutive loss to Michigan, which caused the Buckeyes to miss the Big Ten Championship Game and ultimately the College Football Playoff.
The Cotton Bowl may have been an exhibition, but it had a purpose. It was supposed to help the Buckeyes turn the page on a painful loss to the rivalry by starting a new era at quarterback.
Brown has the “it” factor that wins over his teammates, but we’re talking about a program that has seen C.J. Stroud, Justin Fields and Dwayne Haskins develop under Day’s watch. In small sample sizes with Brown — less than 100 regular-season snaps and a quarter of sloppy football in the Cotton Bowl — we haven’t seen enough. What we have seen leaves plenty of questions.
Brown is set to return next year, as is Kienholz, a four-star prospect in the 2023 cycle who still seems a few years away. Five-star quarterback Air Noland is coming in next season, but there’s always some doubt about how much a freshman quarterback can handle, regardless of talent.
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Nine years ago, Ohio State won a national title on the same field in Arlington with its third-string quarterback.
On Friday night, Ohio State found itself relying on its third-string quarterback again, but this time it was a freshman who wasn’t ready for the moment. It didn’t help that all of his first drives started from inside his own 15-yard line in the second quarter, but Ohio State failed to score a touchdown in this game. Enough said.
A lot has changed at Ohio State in the near-decade since its last national title. The Kienholz situation and the Cardale Jones situation are much different, given that Jones was in the program for multiple years before being thrust into his situation.
It’s so easy to feel bad for Brown. He keeps getting injured at the most inopportune times and you hate to see it for a player who says and does all the right things. His teammates — many of whom hugged him on the field before he hit the locker room after the game — love him. But Day is left with a huge, unanswerable question at the quarterback position.
A year ago, Day was viewed as one of the two best quarterback coaches in college football. Now he has to figure out how to climb out of this hole.
And what to do with Brown is at the center of that dilemma.
(Top photo: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)
