JUST IN: Ohio State plans to add a highly skilled transfer quarterback. Examining the most plausible choices

K-State’s Will Howard and Liberty’s Kaidon Salter seem like the last two possibilities for the Buckeyes to add a QB.

For me, and I assume for many of you as well, I had hoped that the Cotton Bowl would go a long way to determining what Ohio State’s starting quarterback situation in 2024 looked like. Whether that was cementing Devin Brown as QB1 or, after his injury, whether Lincoln Kienholz had grabbed the opportunity to play and refused to let it go. Obviously, neither of those happened, so instead we are back where we were a year ago with an uncertain future at the most important position on the team, just with slightly different pieces in play.

Last year, Kyle McCord was the veteran-most player in the mix with Brown and Kienholz — once he got to campus over the summer — also factoring in. Now, it’s McCord, Kienholz, and Air Noland, who will arrive in Columbus sometime in the next few days, if he isn’t there already.

But they aren’t the only guys who could be a part of the quarterback competition. At this point, we’ve all heard the rumblings about former Kansas State quarterback Will Howard potentially becoming a Buckeye at any time, and yesterday the imminent entrance into the transfer portal by current Liberty quarterback Kaidon Salter got many Buckeye fans excited about the possibility of him becoming a Buckeye as well. While it is believed that he will follow his former coach Hugh Freeze to Auburn, until that is confirmed, we’ll at least entertain the idea of him coming to Columbus.

Of course, given the seeming hesitance that Ryan Day and his staff have had to engage with the transfer portal so far this offseason, there is no guarantee that OSU will add another player to the quarterback competition, despite the apparent need.

Both Howard and Salter are multi-talented quarterbacks who bring more mobility — to varying degrees — to the position than we saw out of McCord this season. However, from a statistical standpoint, neither is a slam dunk major improvement over what the Buckeyes got out of the position in 2023. McCord had a better completion percentage and more yards than both Howard and Salter and had the same six interceptions that the latter did on 58 more passing attempts — Howard finished the season with 10 INTs on nine more passes than McCord.

However, Salter did rack up 25% more touchdown passes than McCord and Howard did, while also rushing for over 1,000 yards and an additional dozen scores — Howard had nine rushing TDs of his own.