Ewers' departure won't hurt Buckeyes

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Former OSU quarterback Quinn Ewers on the sidelines before one of their games this season. Photo by Sam Fahmi/Columbus Wired.

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It appears Quinn Ewers' time in a scarlet and gray uniform is quickly coming to an end.

Columbus Wired can confirm through a source that the true freshman quarterback entered his name into the NCAA's transfer portal on Friday.

The 6-foot-2, 200-pound Southlake, Tex. native came to Columbus as a reclassified freshman and ended up playing two snaps for the Buckeyes which came in their game against Michigan State on Nov. 20. Both plays were handoffs.

Buckeye Nation may see this as a major setback given Ewers' upside. The coaching staff liked him and head coach Ryan Day said he has a lot of potential. Although Day also said throughout the season whenever he was asked about Ewers' progress that Ewers "wasn't there yet" and had a lot of work to do. And that was probably evident due to the fact that Ewers failed to lose his "black stripe" which became a tradition under former head coach Urban Meyer where a player wasn't officially considered a Buckeye until they had the black stripe down the middle of their practice helmet taken away.

There is no doubt that this probably stings several fans who saw Ewers as the prodigal one that was going to surpass freshman Kyle McCord and become the next starter for the Buckeyes after next year. That's because current starter C.J. Stroud more than likely will depart seeing as how he is this year's Heisman favorite and will have been away from high school for three years at the conclusion of next season.

But for a kid who was ranked as the country's No. 1 overall recruit in two different classes, it's hard to blame Ewers for not wanting to stick around another year holding a clipboard.

The 18-year-old was supposed to still be in high school this year as a senior. Instead, he was granted early graduation from Carroll High School after meeting Texas' graduation requirements and enrolled at Ohio State in mid-August as a member of the 2021 recruiting class. According to 247Sports' composite rankings, he was listed as the 2022 class' No. 1 overall recruit. After reclassifying, he became this year's No. 1 overall recruit.

He reclassified to take advantage of the NCAA's new NIL provision which now allows college athletes in all divisions to make money from their Name, Image and Likeness. And it's hard to argue that wasn't the case after it was reported that he signed different deals totaling $1.4 million once he became an eligible college athlete. Those deals included Holy Kombucha, a beverage company out of Dallas, Tex. and Ricart Automotive, a Columbus-based car dealership where he was given a supercharged Ford F-250 Tremor truck. He was also seen in an ad by Ricart that was aired a couple of weeks ago and was promoted on their Twitter feed two days ago.

This now leaves Stroud and McCord as the only scholarship QB's on the roster as Ewers is the third QB to enter their name into the portal in the last week after redshirt freshman Jack Miller III announced via his Twitter account the day after the Michigan game that he was departing Columbus, too. Fourth-year junior walk-on Jagger LaRoe and junior J.P. Andrade are still on the roster but are listed as preferred walk-ons.

However, it was announced via several media outlets that four-star recruit Devin Brown out of Draper (Corner Canyon High School) Utah has flipped his commitment to USC and will instead ink with the Buckeyes. The 6-foot-3, 189-pounder is listed by 247Sports as the No. 1 recruit out of Utah, the nation's fifth-rated QB and No. 52 overall recruit in the country.

Ultimately, fans should see this as addition by subtraction. Whenever there are too many chefs in the kitchen, the recipe is bound to suffer. And it's not like the team doesn't have qualified culinary artists to cook up some tasty dishes. Once again, Stroud is considered by many to be the front-runner for the Heisman and McCord is certainly a qualified backup even when we saw some shaky performances when he entered into mop-up duty. However, his game against Akron should be an indication that he's no slouch after he set an OSU game record of 319 passing yards, which were the most for a true freshman in their first start.

And with the addition of Brown, the Buckeyes should consider themselves lucky they're in a position to have that kind of talent to fall back on.