The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Fields shows he’s ready for Ohio State spotlight
COLUMBUS » Josh Myers was caught off guard Aug. 31 at Ohio Stadium.
Ohio State’s sophomore center had unequivocal confidence in the guy he was going to be snapping the ball to in the Buckeyes’ seasonopener against visiting Florida Atlantic.
But Myers had been there before. He had been a first-year player running out of the tunnel in Ohio Stadium in front of 100,000-plus rabid fans.
There were supposed to be, ya know, butterflies.
Apparently, neither Myers nor anyone else told that to Justin Fields, who was making not only his first start as a Buckeye, but also his first college start period after transferring from Georgia in the offseason.
Fields threw for four touchdowns and ran for another, leading the Buckeyes to a 45-21 win over the undermanned Owls and showed that there IS life after the departure of record-setting quarterback Dwayne Haskins, who left for the NFL after the 2018 season.
“I expected first-game jitters,” Myers said of Fields, “but he was on point. He played really well.”
Which is good news for the Buckeyes going forward.
Ohio State’s margin for error at quarterback was whittled to virtually nothing within months of the Buckeyes’ 28-23 win over Washington in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.
Haskins bolted for the NFL, where he was the first-round draft pick of the Redskins, and his 2018 backup, Tate Martell, transferred to Miami after Fields announced his transfer to Ohio State. Another candidate for quarterback, Matthew Baldwin, transferred after OSU’s spring game.
What it all meant was that Fields was OSU’s only real option at quarterback this year. He couldn’t stink. News flash — he didn’t. Fields accounted for four touchdowns in Ohio State’s first 13 plays of the game.
Not only did he score on a 51-yard touchdown run on the fourth play of the game, but he then hit Jeremy Ruckert, Binjamen Victor and Chris Olave on touchdown passes on the next three OSU possessions.
The Justin Fields era had officially begun.
And it did with the subtlety of an M-80 going off in a mailbox.
“I think I did good overall,” said Fields, who completed 18 of 25 passes for 234 yards and also ran for 51 yards. “Of course there’s always room to improve, but we just have to keep working as a unit and keep getting better in all aspects of the game.”
Fields played a backup role at Georgia last season as a freshman.
That being said, he had never started a game prior to Aug. 31 against FAU.
He was pretty sure things weren’t supposed to come as easily as it did.
On his 51-yard touchdown run, he said of the gaping hole he ran through, “as I was running it, I was like thinking to myself ‘that was kinda easy.’ “
On the second play of the next drive, he was so surprised how open Jeremy Ruckert was that he had to take a double- and triple-take to make sure he hadn’t missed a defender in coverage.
“When I see him like wide open, I just make sure there’s nobody else around him because it doesn’t seem like it’s supposed to be that wide open,” he said. “So it was good.”
Coaches often say the best-case scenario as a coach is to play well enough to win, but still have enough things go wrong that teaching moments won’t be difficult to come by at the following week of practice.
That was certainly the case in Ohio State’s seemingly lopsided win, not to mention Fields’ performance.
After scoring four
touchdowns within their first 13 plays, Ohio State’s offense went dormant for the rest of the first half, putting no points on the board and punting five times.
OSU had 220 yards and and four touchdowns on its first 13 plays. Over the next 25 plays, the Buckeyes accumulated only 60 yards.
The Buckeyes gained their footing in the second half, scoring two more touchdowns — one going to Ruckert on a short pass — to go with a Blake Haubeil field goal. But the offensive lull got the attention of Coach Ryan Day and his staff.
“We came out to such a quick lead and maybe we took a deep breath there,” Day said.
“I’m not sure, but we can’t let that happen. We have to keep the pedal to the medal on that and keep going.”
A lull like that could be disastrous against a more formidable opponent - not just Nov. 23 against visiting Penn State or Nov. 30 at Michigan, but maybe as soon as next weekend when a dangerous Cincinnati team comes to the ‘Shoe.’
Fields vowed to address shortcomings and lulls, acting like the senior leader that he isn’t.
“I’m just going to get back in the film room and see what mistakes we had, fix those and get ready for Cincinnati,” Fields said.
“We jumped on (FAU) early, but we just gotta keep that tempo up and just be able to score all game long.”
In an early critique of his first-year starting quarterback, Day said protections, reads and decisions can be improved upon.
“A lot to build from off of today,” Day said.
But this he does know, albeit from a small sample size, Justin Fields is more than capable of the job of leading Ohio State’s offense.