Kyle McCord’s first season as Ohio State’s starting quarterback will be his last.
The Ohio State quarterback entered the transfer portal on Monday just hours after the opening of the portal, an Ohio State spokesperson confirmed.
McCord posted a statement on social media on Monday morning in which he said he has “decided to enter the transfer portal to explore other opportunities.”
— Kyle McCord (@kylemccord16) December 4, 2023
McCord started all 12 of Ohio State’s regular-season games at quarterback, but Ryan Day declined to commit to McCord as Ohio State’s starting quarterback moving forward during his press conference on Sunday. Now, the wheels are in motion for Ohio State to have a new quarterback in 2024, whether that be Devin Brown, Lincoln Kienholz, incoming freshman Air Noland or an incoming quarterback from the portal.
While McCord performed well enough for Ohio State to win its first 11 games of the season, he did not perform at the same level as his predecessors C.J. Stroud, Justin Fields and Dwayne Haskins, who were all Heisman Trophy finalists in their first year as Ohio State’s starting quarterback. And the two interceptions he threw against Michigan played a big part in Ohio State suffering its third straight loss in The Game, keeping them out of this year’s Big Ten Championship Game and College Football Playoff.
As a result, Day said Sunday that Ohio State would evaluate its options at quarterback going forward.
“When you come up short, the bottom line is you got to look at everything, because you didn't get it done. And that's the thing that is just sobering here,” Day said. “At 11-1, you come up short on the last possession, it's just not good enough. So you got to look at everything, and we will look at everything.”
A source told Eleven Warriors that Ohio State is considering the addition of a transfer quarterback. Asked Sunday whether the Buckeyes would pursue a transfer quarterback, Day didn’t say Ohio State would, but he didn’t rule out the possibility, either.
“I mean, right now we're not actively out there searching for anything other than we'll see kind of what the next month brings in all positions. So I'm not gonna sit here and get into specifics on each of those positions,” Day said. “We like the guys that we have at a bunch of positions, but we're going to make sure that whether it's numbers or depth, that we have the right guys in the right spots.”
McCord completed 65.8% of his passing attempts for 3,170 yards and 24 touchdowns with six interceptions in 12 games for the Buckeyes this season, his first as the team's starting quarterback. For his Ohio State career as a whole, McCord completed 66.5% of his passing attempts for 3,776 yards and 27 touchdowns with eight interceptions, also including one start against Akron as a true freshman in 2021.
McCord has one remaining year of collegiate eligibility.
His departure leaves three scholarship quarterbacks on Ohio State’s roster for the Cotton Bowl: Brown, Kienholz and Tristan Gebbia, a seventh-year senior who has not played any snaps this season. Brown, Kienholz and Noland, a five-star recruit in the 2024 class, are the three quarterbacks currently set to be on Ohio State’s 2024 roster.
McCord is already the ninth player to enter the portal for Ohio State, matching the number of transfers the Buckeyes had all of last offseason. He is the first player to enter the portal who started a game for the Buckeyes this season, however, as all of the others – running back Evan Pryor, center Victor Cutler Jr., defensive end Omari Abor, cornerbacks Jyaire Brown and Ryan Turner, safeties Cameron Martinez and Kye Stokes and kicker Parker Lewis – were backups who played only sparingly this year.
