Ohio State junior quarterback Kyle McCord entered the transfer portal on Monday, ending his three-year stint and one-year run as a starter with the program.
McCord leaves Ohio State after starting under center for all 12 games this season, a role he earned by beating out redshirt freshman Devin Brown in a quarterback competition that lasted the entire offseason and went into the regular season. McCord finished his only season as Ohio State’s starter completing 229 of his 348 (65.8 percent) passes for 3,170 passing yards, 24 touchdowns and six interceptions. His passing yard and touchdown totals both ranked second in the Big Ten this year only behind Maryland’s Taulia Tagovailoa.
McCord’s transfer comes just one day after head coach Ryan Day declined to commit to the junior as his starting quarterback both for the team’s Cotton Bowl appearance on Dec. 29 and for next season. When asked multiple questions about McCord’s overall performance this season and his role in the program moving forward, Day said he and his staff are evaluating the entire team, including the quarterback position.
“When you come up short, the bottom line is you have to look at everything because you didn’t get it done,” Day said. “And that’s the thing that is just sobering. At 11-1, you come up short on the last possession, it’s just not good enough. You have to look at everything, and we will look at everything.”
Day also gave a non-committal answer when asked if he and his staff were planning on looking at the transfer portal to bring in a quarterback this offseason. Multiple Power-Five quarterbacks have already entered their names in the portal since the regular season ended, including Duke’s Riley Leonard, Oklahoma’s Dillon Gabriel — who also entered the portal Monday morning — and Washington State’s Cameron Ward, among many others.
“Right now we’re not actively out there searching for anything. … We’ll see what the next month brings in all positions,” Day said on Sunday. “I’m not going sit here and get into specifics on each of those positions. We like the guys that we have at a bunch of positions, but we’re going to make sure that whether it’s numbers or depth, that we have the right guys in the right spots.”
McCord’s departure leaves just three scholarship quarterbacks left on Ohio State’s depth chart entering the Cotton Bowl against Missouri in Brown, true freshman Lincoln Kienholz and seventh-year Tristan Gebbia. Brown and Kienholz both appeared in games this season, combining for 222 passing yards and two touchdowns, while Gebbia did not see the field.
While Gebbia has exhausted his collegiate eligibility, Brown and Kienholz are still eligible to return to the program next season. They will be joined in the quarterback room by Fairburn (Ga.) Langston Hughes five-star Air Noland (6-3, 195), who committed to the Buckeyes in April.
McCord, who has one more year of college eligibility left, finished his three-year Ohio State career completing 270 of his 406 (66.5 percent) of his pass attempts with 27 touchdowns and eight interceptions.
