COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ryan Day caught an old football game on TV the other day and his starting quarterback was playing for another team.
On yeah.
“It was Auburn-Georgia," Day said. “Quarterback for Georgia was Justin Fields. It caught me off guard.."
That replay was from Nov. 11 last year, when No. 5 Georgia beat No. 24 Auburn 27-10. Ohio State’s new starting quarterback was 2-for-2 passing in that game for 20 yards and ran five times for -12 yards, absorbing several sacks. In his first action, Fields was inserted on second-and-goal from the 4-yard line in the middle of the first quarter. He faked a run to his left, turned his back to the play to spin around, looked to throw -- and took a sack.
Up 17 with the game in hand late, the Bulldogs gave Fields a full series, and he led a 13-play, 59-yard drive that ended with a failed fake field goal, handing off eight times, running twice for five yards, completing one pass for 19 yards, drawing a pass interference call on another throw and absorbing a 16-yard sack at the 2-yard line.
But he’s done it.
“He’s taken snaps in SEC games, SEC environment,” Day said. "I slept a little better that night because he caught the snap. He didn’t turn the ball over. That was good. That was one in the books."
But that was not this. And Day and Fields both know that.
With his first game as a college starter a little over a week away, everyone knows Fields at Ohio State isn’t the Fields from Georgia. What we’re waiting to see is how that Georgia experience might have helped Fields, and how the the Buckeyes might learn from what Fields did there.
“That’s very, very different than running a team, managing a team, operating a team. But the good news is he has played in those environments. Any time you’ve taken a snap in those environments, you’ve experienced what it means to play in big-time college football and atmosphere,” Day said. “At least he’s got a little bit of a feel for it. At the same time, managing a game, making great decisions, playing situational football, making decision, taking care of the ball, putting the team in front of yourself, all those things are going to be critical.”
Fields said the experience at Georgia was an asset. He’s not a true freshman, and anything is better than being a true freshman.
“It definitely helped me a lot,” Fields said. “From high school to college is a big difference."
But he wasn’t really a quarterback there, not with everything that entails. He was basically Georgia’s version of Tate Martell. Georgia’s starting quarterback, Jake Fromm, threw 306 passes and ran it 41 times. Fields threw 39 passes and ran it 42 times.
Fields was a wrinkle. How a wrinkle thinks is way different than how a quarterback thinks.
“I didn’t get a lot of opportunities at Georgia, but I felt like every time I went in, I was trying to show the coaches what I could do,” Fields said.
But as the starting quarterback at Ohio State ...
“I just have to be smarter,” Fields interjected.
So he will run. I’ve written at least twice before on Fields’ running ability and have been focused on it since he arrived. It has been such a part of what successful Ohio State quarterbacks have done, until Dwayne Haskins last year. I continue to think the Buckeyes will need the threat of Fields on called runs and scrambles.
But now, it’s time to play. Fields was always going to win the starting QB job. But in announcing Fields as the official starter Monday, Day also said the backup quarterback battle was unsettled between Gunnar Hoak and Chris Chugunov. Fields was already the most valuable Buckeye after the departures of quarterbacks Martell and Matthew Baldwin, but that raised the stakes on keeping Fields around. Because at the moment, the Buckeyes aren’t sure who’s next.
So Fields can run. But it’s about how much he runs, and how he runs. The Buckeyes are as interested as they’ve ever been in making sure the starting quarterback stays healthy and remains the starting quarterback.
“I’m not comfortable with him taking a lot of hits in the course of a game, for sure,” Day said. "I think that those are all things that are going to be really calculated down to the last carry. Like you said, because he has such a great skill set, you can do a lot of things with him. You have to be smart with that.
"I think the type of runs and the type of ways that he runs with the football are different. There’s certain heavy, heavy runs where he’s going to have to go in there and take shots from linebackers. There’s other ones where he’s squirting out to the sideline, stepping out of bounds. There has to be times where he has to learn how to run, too. He has to get down.
“I thought Kyler Murray (at Oklahoma) did a great job of that last year. You saw him kind of squirt out for seven yards, slide, get out of there, he’s OK. There are other times when he is down in the red zone, he’s going to have to lower his shoulder, run the ball well. That’s all part of the plan here in figuring that out for him. But obviously don’t want to put him at risk.”
Fields said that it’s difficult to work on getting down and avoiding hits during preseason camp, when the defense can’t hit him anyway. But he knows the deal.
“When the season comes, it’s just sliding and making smart decisions when those times come,” Fields said. “It’s gonna be a change for me, because last year I was trying to get everything and trying to make a play on every play. So I definitely have to be smarter this year."
Spoken like a starting quarterback who has to stay that way.
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