Former Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord has turned the heads of many in his first two starts for Syracuse, completing 59 of his 85 passes (69.4 percent) for eight touchdowns and just one interception while leading the Orange to a 2-0 record.
McCord’s successes at his new school, which included a career-high 381 passing yards and four touchdowns in Syracuse’s 31-28 upset win over then-No. 23 Georgia Tech last Saturday, have also caught the attention of his former head coach in Columbus, who said on Tuesday that he has been impressed with the now-Orange quarterback’s performance early on this season.
“He’s off to a great start,” Ryan Day said during his weekly press conference held at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. “I’ve only seen a few highlights, and it looks like he’s doing a great job. It looks like the first couple of games he’s gotten in a good rhythm, and got a good win (against Georgia Tech). So I’m happy to see him doing well so far this season.”
McCord transferred to Syracuse last December after starting each of Ohio State’s 12 regular season games last season, completing 229 of his 348 pass attempts (65.8 percent) for 3,170 yards and 24 touchdowns to six interceptions while leading the Buckeyes to a 11-1 record.
McCord has seemingly taken his game to another level at Syracuse after being developed under Day at Ohio State, and the same can be said for former Buckeyes’ quarterback Quinn Ewers.
Ewers, the No. 1-ranked high school prospect in the 2021 class, had just one season in Columbus while serving as a reserve to starter C.J. Stroud before transferring to Texas that offseason, where he has since become one of the top quarterbacks in college football, leading the Longhorns to the College Football Playoff last year and most recently throwing for 246 yards and three touchdowns on the road against Michigan in a 31-12 victory last Saturday.
Day admitted that although it is “a lot different” seeing his former quarterbacks compete and succeed at different schools in this age of the transfer portal, he is ultimately happy to see it occur.
He believes the success of McCord, Ewers and others is an overall positive thing for his program because it works as a selling point to future quarterback recruits who are interested in continuing the lineage of talented Buckeye quarterbacks, whether they end up finishing their careers in Columbus or not.
“I think that’s one of the reasons in recruiting that — we sell that to guys, too,” Day said. “When you come to Ohio State, you’re going to get developed at a high level at every position. But at quarterback I take a lot of pride in that, in the fact that we develop guys at a high level. Even if you were to leave — we don’t want you to leave — but even if you were to leave it’s still time well spent and invested. So you’re happy when guys go on and do well, even though you want to retain as many guys as you can. That’s our whole culture. But that’s just the way of the world.
“So I’m happy to see Kyle do well. He won some great games here and poured a lot of effort into the program. But it’s like that with (a lot of guys who transfer). I think (former Ohio State tight end) Joe Royer is doing well now at Cincinnati. So we follow those guys and want to support them.”
