Dwayne Haskins rewrote Big Ten records, got Urban Meyer to do something he’s never done, and got Ohio State to throw more both now and after he’s gone.
Dwayne Haskins will get to stand on the stage at Saturday’s Heisman Trophy ceremony in New York. He won’t win, because he played quarterback in the same year Kyler Murray and Tua Tagovailoa did, and one of those two is going to win. The Playoff semifinal opponents are currently No. 1 and 2 in all-time single-season passer rating.
But what Haskins did in 2018 was extra impressive in context, and it’s worth appreciating. He earned his spot by running up huge passing numbers at a school where QBs just don’t do that, and for a head coach who’d never before let a QB rip it like Haskins did. All told, he had a better passing year than any QB in the Big Ten’s entire history.
There wasn’t a QB this year who pushed more limits. Let’s run through the ways.
1. Neither Haskins’ school nor conference has ever seen a year like his.
He’s thrown for 4,580 yards and 47 touchdowns. That laps the Big Ten’s previous yardage record of 3,985, set in the same number of games (13) by Purdue’s Curtis Painter in 2006. It breezes past Drew Brees’ 39 TDs in 1998, also in 13 games.
He didn’t have the most efficient season in Big Ten history. His 9.2 yards per throw are more than a yard short of the league’s all-time best, and even behind a couple of OSU QBs, Troy Smith and Bobby Hoying. But Haskins gets a break there, because he had to shoulder a much heavier load than anyone who’s ever played his position in Columbus. He’s thrown 496 passes. The previous high in a year for an OSU QB was 384, by Joe Germaine in 1998.
A fun way to think about how different he is than any other OSU QB is that until this year, the school had one 400-yard passing game in its history. It now has six. He beat Art Schlichter’s 458-yard record twice, once while throwing 11 fewer passes. Haskins’ Big Ten Championship against Northwestern was the best game a Buckeye QB ever played.
2. Haskins was so good that he got Urban Meyer to go air raid.
Haskins didn’t do this all alone. Offensive coordinator Ryan Day, hired before 2017 and promoted before 2018, was a big part of the evolution. But it’s hard to imagine Ohio State having become as pass-oriented as it did without having Haskins behind center.
Meyer has been one of the most innovative offensive coaches in this century. He was one of the pioneers of the spread-to-run scheming that’s ruled the day at, like, 100 of 130 FBS schools.
And within that scheme, he’s never turned a QB loose like Haskins. Having great college QBs who don’t throw much has been Meyer’s thing. Some brief samples of this throughout his career:
- Meyer’s Utah had Alex Smith and threw on 39.6 percent of its snaps in 2004.
- Meyer’s Florida had Tim Tebow and threw on 39.6 percent of its snaps in 2009.
- Meyer’s Ohio State had Braxton Miller and threw between 33 and 37 percent of the time in 2012 and 2013.
- Then the Buckeyes had J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones taking snaps for four years, and finally got as high as 42.7 percent throws in 2017.
- And this year, with Haskins, Ohio State threw on 49.2 percent of its snaps.
The Buckeyes threw a lot of horizontal passes when Barrett had the controls. But Haskins gave them a downfield element they just didn’t have before. It showed up in every game, but especially the Big Ten title match:
3. Actually, Haskins was so good that Ohio State decided to hire the guy who installed this passing system as head coach.
Day will replace Meyer when the head coach steps down after the Rose Bowl. Day was the obvious choice, in part because of how he handled the interim job during Meyer’s Zach Smith-related suspension at the start of the season. But part of it’s that Day’s offense, with Haskins at the wheel, was outstanding. The Buckeyes ranked No. 4 in Offensive S&P+: No. 5 when passing, No. 54 when running, as the ground game weirdly flailed.
Expect Ohio State to air-raidify itself further with Day atop the pyramid:
That’s the style of offense Day is bringing to Ohio State, and that’s how the Buckeyes plan to stay ahead of the rest of the Big Ten.
The last two recruiting classes for the Buckeyes included 11 total Ohioans combined and brought five-star Californian and Elite 11 finalist Tate Martell to wait for a chance to follow Haskins whenever he departs for the NFL. The 2019 class hails from around the country and is currently headlined by five-star Texan and skilled wide receiver Garrett Wilson of Lake Travis High School (which produced Baker Mayfield).
The days of finding ways to pound the ball between the tackles with Tresselball might be over. Much like Alabama and USC, Ohio State is evolving from playing smashmouth football to basketball on grass. It’s a new Day in Columbus, Ohio.
If Haskins isn’t in the NFL in 2019, he will be by 2020. But his first year playing QB for Ohio State changed the entire future trajectory of a blue-blood program. It’s hard to find a single player who made a bigger impact on his program this year than him.