Update, July 23: Edmunds shut down his recruitment and plans to sign with Ohio State in December. The one-quarterback class this piece describes is now a settled one-quarterback class, and Eleven Warriors reports the expectation is that he will be the only one in it. The argument below, about what happens when the one leaves, stands as written on July 16.
The quarterback at the top of this page is the most accurate passer in college football, per Eleven Warriors, and Dan Hope has him in the running to be the first quarterback taken in the 2027 NFL draft. That would make him Ohio State’s fourth top-15 pick at quarterback in nine years.
Alabama recruited him.
The case for Quarterback U
Start with the part that is not in dispute. When Houston took C.J. Stroud with the No. 2 overall pick in 2023, Sports Illustrated noted he was “the fourth-ever and third-straight Ohio State starting quarterback to be taken in the first round.” Before him it was Justin Fields, the No. 11 selection in 2021. Before him, Dwayne Haskins, the No. 15 pick in the 2019 draft. Before all of them, and a long way before, Art Schlichter went No. 4 overall in 1982.
Three first-round quarterbacks in five drafts, and a fourth in that run on the way if Hope is right about Sayin. There is no other way to say it: the NFL keeps taking Ohio State quarterbacks early, and the pitch writes itself for any high school passer with an offer.
The pitch just is not, on inspection, a recruiting pitch.
Where they actually came from
Take the four names one at a time and ask a single question about each: which school’s recruiting department signed him out of high school?
Dwayne Haskins. Ohio State’s. He was ranked No. 23 overall in the ESPN 300 and the No. 3 quarterback in the 2016 class when he switched his pledge from Maryland to Ohio State in January 2016, per ESPN’s Tom VanHaaren, after Maryland fired Randy Edsall mid-season. “It has been a dream of mine to play for Ohio State,” Haskins said at the time. That is a flip, and a flip is recruiting. Ohio State went and took the No. 3 quarterback in the country off another Big Ten program while he was still in high school and unsigned. That is the machine working exactly as advertised.
C.J. Stroud. Ohio State’s. Eleven Warriors’ Zack Carpenter had him as the “No. 2-ranked pro-style quarterback in the 2020 class” out of Rancho Cucamonga High School in California when he committed in December 2019, over Georgia and Michigan. Also a genuine recruiting win, also over a blue blood.
Justin Fields. Georgia’s. Fields was “the No. 1 recruit in the 2018 ESPN 300,” per ESPN’s Mark Schlabach, and he signed with Georgia, where he spent his freshman season behind Jake Fromm and threw 39 passes all year. He arrived in Columbus in January 2019 as a transfer. The best recruit in America at any position in his class was recruited, signed and enrolled by another school. Ohio State got him second.
Julian Sayin. Alabama’s. He was “ESPN’s top quarterback recruit in the 2024 class” and “ESPN’s No. 3 overall prospect” in it, per Pete Thamel, and he committed to Alabama, enrolled at Alabama in early January, and entered the portal within weeks when Nick Saban retired. Ohio State got him second too.
So the modern Quarterback U case is 50/50. Two of those four were recruited here. Two were recruited somewhere else and acquired later. (Schlichter, the 1982 pick, sits outside the nine-year run, and I have no source for who recruited him, so he stays a number and nothing more.)
And then there is the one who won it
The quarterback who actually delivered the national championship is not on the first-round list at all, and his route is the bluntest of the lot. Will Howard “played his first four years at Kansas State,” per the Associated Press, and told CBS Sports he left because “they kind of took advantage of me and got me for cheap, so I decided to go somewhere else and make a little money.” He went 12-5 over 17 starts in Manhattan before he ever wore scarlet.
Then he opened the College Football Playoff title game with 13 straight completions, a record for that game, finished 17 of 21 for 231 yards, and was named its offensive MVP. Across four playoff games he completed 75.2 percent of his throws for 1,150 yards and eight touchdowns.
Ohio State’s most important quarterback season of the last decade was played by a man Kansas State recruited.
What this actually means, and what it does not
Here is the conclusion this piece will not draw: that Ohio State has stopped recruiting quarterbacks, or prefers the portal at the position. Nothing in the reporting says that, and our own board contradicts the strong version of it. The 2027 class has a quarterback, and he has been committed for more than 18 months.
What the record does support is narrower and more useful to a recruit. Quarterback U is a development claim, not a recruiting claim. Ohio State’s evidence that it turns quarterbacks into first-round picks is real, and roughly half of it was assembled from other programs’ recruiting classes. Haskins and Stroud prove the pipeline can start in high school. Fields, Howard and Sayin prove it does not have to.
That is not a scandal. It is arguably a compliment: the coaching staff has twice identified the best available passer in the country after somebody else did the recruiting, and made him better. But a 17-year-old being shown three first-round jerseys should know which of them the Buckeyes signed on signing day, because it changes what the number is evidence of.
This site has now caught the same shape three times. The O-Line U pitch leaned on two linemen in one draft when one of them arrived from San Diego State. The Running Back U pitch leaned on two backs in one draft when one of them, Quinshon Judkins, spent two seasons at Ole Miss first. The DBU pitch leaned on Caleb Downs, who chose Alabama over Ohio State out of high school. Every one of those facts is true. None of them is a fact about recruiting.
The 2027 answer
Which brings it back to the board.
Ohio State has nineteen players committed in the 2027 class as of July 18. Exactly one is a quarterback: Brady Edmunds, a four-star from Huntington Beach, California, ranked No. 251 nationally at the time of writing, committed since December 2024. Through the middle of July he was also, as this site reported on July 5, the least settled piece of the class: he took June official visits to both Ohio State and UCLA, and told 247Sports’ Blair Angulo that the Buckeyes “made it clear that they want me in this class.”
There is no second quarterback on the board. If the pattern of the last nine years holds, that is not necessarily the crisis it looks like, and that is exactly the problem with the pattern.
Full class: the 2027 commit board. Where the holes are: class needs.
