Tavien St. Clair is standing in the background of Ohio State’s quarterback room.
Well, perhaps the word background is the wrong descriptor. He’s on the horizon, a hazy figure in the distance. His chance will come. That’s all but guaranteed as a five-star prospect with elite physical tools, a sharp mind and a deep appreciation for all things Buckeye as a native Ohioan.
So while Julian Sayin and Lincoln Kienholz duel to be Ohio State’s next starting quarterback, St. Clair is comfortable sitting behind them and soaking up all the lessons he can. He’s playing out his own position competition, just internally.
“I'm competing with myself,” St. Clair said on Tuesday. “I'm trying to get better every day, be who I can be for this team, wherever that's needed. I'm trying to be the best teammate I can be for these quarterbacks, the best teammate I can be for this team, because they're all my brothers.”
One of the first lessons St. Clair learned this offseason was a soothing one: He’s got support.
Playing for Division III Bellefontaine in high school, even as a bit of a late riser on the national recruiting scene, St. Clair felt pressure to make something big happen every snap he took. He performed under that pressure, passing for more than 3,000 yards as a junior and 2,500 yards as a senior with a completion percentage of at least 68% both years, but Jeremiah Smith wasn’t catching his passes.
Ohio State will have the best wide receivers in the country so long as Brian Hartline is under its employ. The Buckeyes have one of the nation’s best tight end rooms going forward under Keenan Bailey and Tyler Bowen’s offensive line room is capable of protecting St. Clair when his time comes, too.
“I have a luxury of all great players on the field at the same time as me here,” St. Clair said. “At Bellefontaine, I had good players, but they weren't the level that I have here. So I felt obligated to go and have to make the play, like I had to make the play. Sometimes it wasn't always the right play. But here, you have the great players, they're gonna be in the right spots. They know exactly what they're supposed to do. All you have to do is get the ball to them at the right time.”
Another lesson has been on time management. The same as any freshman football player arriving at a big-time college campus, there’s a balance St. Clair had to strike between schoolwork, filmwork, practice and personal life. He said the time commitment has been the biggest adjustment going from the prep to collegiate level.
“You feel like you have an idea coming in, like, yeah, I'm gonna have to watch a lot of film, things like that,” St. Clair said. “But the attention to detail at Ohio State is different. Every single play, every detail has to matter. Every inch matters. That's what Coach Day and Coach Mick always say. They always preach that to us. So every inch actually matters here. And you can't have a bad day at Ohio State.”
St. Clair has seen early growing pains in his freshman year. He still dons his black stripe as a player who needs to “officially” earn his way to being a Buckeye, although only four members of his freshman class have shed theirs to date. In the spring game, he had to chase down one of his fellow freshmen, safety Faheem Delane, after tossing him an interception. St. Clair threw another pick to Brenten “Inky” Jones, but finished the spring game 11-of-15 for 116 yards with a touchdown.
Ohio State true freshman QB Tavien St. Clair was given a chance to execute the RZ offense with 20 seconds on the clock in the 4th quarter of the spring game.
— Andy Backstrom (@andybackstrom) April 12, 2025
St. Clair went 3-of-3 and dialed up this TD pass to fellow first year, WR Phillip Bell, on the game's final play. pic.twitter.com/uwzw6XG6G9
Enrolling early allowed St. Clair to work through some of those hiccups and iron out his approach to his development, however. Even though he’s not getting in with Ohio State’s first- or second-team offense, he’s putting himself in the cleats of Sayin and Kienholz when those units are working.
“I’m in the same mindset I was when I came in here in the spring,” St. Clair said. “Really just learning everything I can from my coaches and my peers and mentors in the quarterback room. A big focus for my personal development has been mental reps. Standing in the back, even though Julian or Lincoln might have the rep, going through it in my mind, picturing what I would do in that scenario, is really big for all of us.”
St. Clair’s goal isn’t just to know Ohio State’s offense; it’s to direct it.
“What I wanted to get done in fall camp was really just having command of the offense,” St. Clair said. “Like in the spring, I was learning the offense. I was just trying to make sure the operation was clean and things like that. But now, I'm really trying to go out and execute. Know my reads. Go to the right checkdown if the coverage isn't allowing me to throw it down the field.”
So no, St. Clair won’t be Ohio State’s starting quarterback in 2025. But with his approach and skillset, future Buckeye opponents should watch out for when he stops just competing with himself and starts competing with them.
“It takes time, and it takes reps,” St. Clair said. “They really preached that to me in the spring. It's gonna take reps for me to get that. I feel like I built on it, going into the fall, I'm getting a lot better at it. I still have a ton of growth to make as a quarterback, and where I wanna be for this room, and the teammate I wanna be for this team.”
