Ohio State’s well-documented “next man up” approach is a cliched sports adage, but it’s been more of a fact than a mantra this season and more of reality than a culture.
After all, college football “is a tough-ass game,” as head coach Urban Meyer said Sunday. And few things are tougher than devastating injuries to two star quarterbacks in one season.
Without J.T. Barrett, who had been dazzling in place of the injured Braxton Miller this year before breaking his ankle against Michigan, the Buckeyes have no other option than to turn to third-string Cardale Jones.
Jones, who is perhaps best known for a social media blunder more than two years ago, is charged with keeping Ohio State’s championship aspirations alive and well.
“It’s his show,” Meyer said Sunday. “He’s got the keys to the car.”
Currently, that car is known as the sixth-ranked Buckeyes. Meyer wants him to drive it either Pasadena or New Orleans, where the nation’s four best teams will battle in the sport’s first-ever playoff.
To keep that dream alive, though, there is considerable work to be done in molding Jones, a redshirt sophomore who has yet to play meaningful football for the Buckeyes.
As he readies himself for his first-career start in the Big Ten Championship Game against Wisconsin Saturday, Ohio State’s coaches are furiously trying to prepare the 6-foot-5, 250-pound gunslinger with — as Meyer put it — “a cannon for arm.”
“He’s not ready today,” offensive coordinator Tom Herman said after a win against the Wolverines last weekend, “but he will be Saturday.”
Because of its success with Barrett, who had previously not played since his senior year of high school, there is a certain confidence at Ohio State that it will manage with Jones, too. There is a shared belief the among the Buckeyes that they will overcome with a blossomed and matured cast of players around him.
“I've said this many times, the quarterback is a product of the guys around him and the guys around him are playing pretty good right now,” Meyer said.
Added Herman: “The quarterback doesn’t have to win games for us, the quarterback has to manage games and distribute the football and lead. We’ve seen that throughout this season. As long as he’s mentally prepared and he’s got a ton of physical tools … I have nothing but the utmost confidence in him because of what we’ve got around him.”
But there is still a certain and warranted sense of angst that hovers over Columbus without Barrett, whose season was so dazzling it became a Heisman campaign, and how he was able to rally the Buckeyes to an 11-1 finish in the regular season after a sky-is-falling loss to Virginia Tech in September.
Faith in Jones is duly met with a frantic rush to prepare him, and there remains doubt in whether Jones can replace Barrett like Barrett replaced Miller.
“He's been here I think for 120 years," Meyer quipped, smiling. "He's been here for a while." Ohio State needs him to play like it this weekend.
