COLUMBUS, Ohio — Will Howard threw his first interception as Ohio State’s starting quarterback and he’s playing it off the way you’d expect someone in their fifth season of college football to play it off.
It was one of four incompletions in a 49-14 win over Marshall where it seemed like for most of the game, the Buckeyes could do no wrong offensively. Explosive plays came in abundance in both the passing game and running game for a team that technically only had the ball for 23:45 and 57 plays yet still managed to score in bunches.
But according to head coach Ryan Day, that was always the plan for Week 4.
“We wanted to play fast today,” Day said. “We felt like that was the right approach and we did. When you do that and you’re creating explosive plays but then turn the ball over quickly, too, things like that can happen. That’s the risk.
“We don’t always play like that because we don’t always want to put the defense in a bad position that way. But we felt like in this game philosophically that’s what we were gonna do. We talked to the team about it. Obviously we talked to the offense about it. We had a good tempo about us on offense today. We had an opportunity to wear them down and be explosive. I thought that was well done.”
Playing can sometimes come with mistakes. For Howard, that meant a deep ball to Jeremiah Smith which has often meant good things backfired for the first time all year. Instead, of following up one explosive drive with another, it gave the Thundering Herd back the ball.
But Howard sees it as no more than just a small hiccup on an otherwise successful day. Especially when he has a good reason for why he threw a ball to a heavily covered Smith in the first place.
“Sometimes things happen,” Howard said. “Looking at it the boundary was clouded, so I couldn’t throw the boundary. We were max protection, so I had three routes. It was either that or my vertical wrap and my vertical wrap was covered. That was really the only option I had.”
Smith has spent the first three weeks proving that being “the only option Howard has” is rarely ever a bad thing. More times than not he’s going to make a play on the ball and create something explosive with it hence why through three games he has 14 catches for 281 yards and four touchdowns.
Every so often the opposite is going to happen. But the expectation is that the opposite outcome is a rare enough occurrence that you’ll live with the odds. Playing fast and being aggressive is more important than worrying about the cons that come with that approach.
“The plan all week was let that thing rip and put it on a spot,” Howard said. “I’m gonna trust No. 4 every day of the week and he’s gonna go make that play. Sometimes things happen. It’s football. We had to bounce back and it’s part of the game. It’s about how you respond and I think we responded really well. Nobody batted an eye. We just went back to work and kept going.”
The response was a 16 of 20 day for 275 yards and two touchdowns plus another rushing touchdown on a QB sneak. His other three incompletions included two that show the chemistry between him and his weapons is still developing. But all of that is a good thing.
Howard threw his first pick as a Buckeye. He also took his first sack. Regardless of whose fault it was both either, the more important factor is what followed. It changed nothing as the veteran quarterback showed the difference between someone with his experience and a younger player new to being a starter.
“Usually when you have somebody like that a bad play comes and goes and you learn,” Day said on Wednesday evening ahead of the game. “It doesn’t start to compile. You have a play then you move on from it. Sometimes a young guy can get unraveled quickly.”
That never happened with Howard. A mistake was made, and no one batted an eye. The result was another explosive day for an offense building on itself brick by brick.
“I sitting on the sideline today and talking to some of the other quarterbacks, Devin (Brown) and Julian (Sayin) and I was like, ‘Dude our offense is so explosive it’s crazy,’” Howard said. “Literally every play could be a touchdown. If we block everything up, every play could break for a touchdown.
“It’s exciting but it makes it kind of fun. …You ever know what’s gonna happen on a certain play.”
