COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Quinn Ewers is establishing what has started to become the norm for the Ohio State football program’s quarterback commits.
The nation’s top player unsurprisingly added his name to the list of field generals invited to attend the Elite 11 competition this summer, continuing a recent trend among future Buckeyes.
The competition founded in 1999 by former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer has been a way to establish who the best high school quarterbacks are in the country. Typically the event includes 24 players tasked with competing against each other for a week for the honor.
Two OSU players earned that acknowledgment in the event’s first 15 years of existence, and both came in the same class. Troy Smith and Justin Zwick’s connection began as members of the 2001 class before heading to Columbus, where both spent time as a starter before Smith inevitably won the job and turned into a Heisman Trophy winner.
It wasn’t until 2015 that a future Buckeye would once again earn this honor, and he wasn’t even a commit at the time. Dwayne Haskins — a Maryland commit at the time — earned that honor in a year that future Ole Miss-turned-Michigan quarterback Shea Patterson won MVP. Haskins later flipped to Ohio State when the Buckeyes’ first choice fell through, a scenario that played out a handful of times over the next few cycles.
Tate Martell followed in 2016 as arguably the most famous high school football player in the country. He served as another top 100 recruit where that type of honor seemed to come with the territory. It wasn’t until the following summer where a future Buckeye used the event to make a statement.
Justin Fields and C.J. Stroud weren’t supposed to win MVP honors in their respective years. The 2017 Elite 11 group had its own version of what Quinn Ewers will be this summer in Trevor Lawrence. The future Clemson quarterback was the top player in the country and the pride of the 2018 recruiting class, while Fields was the up-and-coming recruits looking the validate the new-found buzz around his name.
Lawrence was the man standing at the top of the hill, and Fields had everyone questioning whether he was good enough to knock him off.
He validated all of those speculations on his way to being ranked No. 2 in the nation and a Georgia commitment before transferring to OSU a year later. The two would meet twice as college athletes, splitting the meetings before losing to SEC schools in national title games.
“He probably had the most impressive showing of anybody we’ve ever seen at Elite 11,” quarterback trainer Quincy Avery told cleveland.com before the 2019 Fiesta Bowl. “He literally didn’t miss for like a day or two. Trevor, of course, he was good too, but I don’t think there was one person who would’ve been like ‘Oh, I’ll take Trevor over Justin’ simply just throwing at that event.”
Stroud’s journey wasn’t nearly as loud as Fields’ but still held connections to a future Clemson Tiger. He was a late-bloomer in the 2020 recruiting class and didn’t even get an invite initially to compete for a spot in the summer of 2019. He wasn’t even on Ryan Day’s radar at the time. Thanks to D.J. Uiagalelei choosing to spend more time with his teammates at St. John Bosco in California, Stroud got a last-minute call. He took a small opportunity and turned it into MVP honors and a rapid rise up the recruiting rankings that now has many pegging him as Ohio State’s next starting quarterback.
Kyle McCord followed in the summer of 2020 though he wasn’t hoping to raise his profile like Stroud or knock off a so-called prodigy like Fields. He was, however, looking to raise the expectations around him even in a summer plagued by a pandemic. That started by putting together the best performance on Day Two, where players were put through a Pro Day. His score of 45 out of 57 possible points was the best of the 20 quarterbacks and sat behind only Stroud’s score of 50 the previous summer.
“I started out kind of slow,” McCord told cleveland.com of his performance last summer. “I knew I could’ve definitely done better, but I’m proud of the way I bounced back Day Two and had a great Pro Day. I put up a really great score and felt I was locked in the entire time and put my best foot forward.”
McCord didn’t win MVP honors, as that went to now-Oklahoma quarterback Caleb Williams. But he did make the final Elite 11 roster, giving him the momentum needed to take into a fall where he closed out his career with a third straight 6A State Championship in Pennsylvania and eventually earned his fifth star.
Ewers will more than likely add his name to the list of OSU players to earn Elite 11 honors this summer. He’ll be the favorite to win MVP as well, making him the third Buckeye to do so. But he won’t have any of the same motivation in doing so that those before him had.
But isn’t that the point?
Day is slowly turning Ohio State into “Quarterback U,” and part of that includes bringing in the best talent at the position he can in every class. Succeeding in that means every Elite 11 class should feature a future Buckeye, and MVP honors should come with it.
The program went 15 years without having players be part of that Elite 11 conversation. Given how OSU has started recruiting quarterbacks, that type of drought shouldn’t even be fathomable ever again.
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