Ohio State won the national championship with a quarterback in Will Howard that most people would not have said in the preseason was good enough to win a title. But surround him with 5 other players on offense that were drafted in the 1st or 2nd round plus a freshman receiver that seems destined to be the #1 overall pick in two years once eligible (not to mention that defense) and it was good enough in the world of a 12-team playoff.
This season the Buckeyes are rolling with a more prototypical Ohio
State quarterback. Julian Sayin was committed to Nick Saban at Alabama but transferred to OSU before his first spring ball in the wake of Saban’s retirement and Kalen DeBoer’s hire. He was the top-ranked quarterback and #6 overall player in the class of 2024. Since the class of 2014, Sayin is the #14 overall quarterback behind guys like Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, Bryce Young, and Caleb Williams among others. There’s no such thing as a can’t miss QB prospect but Sayin is part of a group for which complete busts are rare.
The early returns have been perfectly respectable. Sayin’s first career start came in the season opener against what should be a top-ten Texas defense. He only threw for 126 total yards but had 3 passes dropped and never turned the ball over. What followed next were eviscerations of the Grambling State and Ohio defenses to the tune of 16.1 YPA and 10.8 YPA in consecutive games. Although, it should be noted, with 3 picks. Sayin’s play style was different as well as he had an Average Depth of Target (ADOT) of 6.2 yards with 0 Big-Time Throws (BTT) per Pro Football Focus against Texas. That climbed to 8.6 and then 9.2 over their last 2 games with 3 total BTTs. Is that a case of the coaching staff only letting Sayin rip it against overmatched competition that will revert against P4 competition again? Or is it newfound comfort in the system with some games under his belt that will carry over to the game against Washington?
One thing we do know is that Sayin will have never started in as hostile an environment as he’s going to see on Saturday. This will be the first ever college road start for Sayin and his only appearance in a road game at all was completing 3/5 passes for 23 yards in garbage time of a 38-7 win at Michigan State last season.
What is a reasonable expectation for Sayin then in his first career road start? Is there any evidence that former five-star studs like Sayin struggle in that setting? Or do they normally treat it just like any other game?
Since the class of 2014 there have been 39 total five-star quarterbacks in the 247 Sports Composite. I went through each of their game logs to see how they fared in their first career road start to get an idea.
We’ll start with some shrinking of the pool. Sayin himself obviously has yet to start a road game which is why we’re all gathered here today. There are also four five-star true freshman QBs in the 2025 class who have yet to start a road game (Tavien St. Clair at Ohio State, Keelon Russell at Alabama, Deuce Knight at Auburn, and Husan Longstreet at USC). Otherwise the only other 5-star in that span who has yet to start a road game for an FBS team is…Sam Huard. Whoops.
That gives us 33 quarterbacks to work with. Most of those QBs unsurprisingly started for the elite programs in the sport. The list includes Oklahoma (x4), Alabama (x3), Clemson (x3), Ohio State (x2), Michigan (x2), Texas (x2) among others. Those six schools make up basically half of the list. Although there are a few on there who flamed out at their first school and ended up making their first road start for programs like UTEP, South Florida, Northwestern, and Kentucky.
The nice thing about looking at first road start is that the competition is usually pretty good. Top programs aren’t playing road games against FCS schools. There are only three of the 33 games that came against a non-P4/Notre Dame team and they came for the two quarterbacks of UCLA (lol) plus UTEP. For the most part we are talking about quarterbacks who were playing a road game against a semi-competent team at a bare minimum.
Let’s get to it then. The overall record for those QBs was 19-14 (0.575) in their first career road start. So they’ve won the majority of their starts but that’s probably lower than you’d expect considering the quality of programs most of them have been playing for over that time. That’s useful information but let’s also look at whether those wins/losses can be attributed to the defense more than the offense. Here are some splits for the road start winners versus losers.
In Wins– Average score: 36.1, Average opponent score: 14.2
In Losses– Average score: 15.6, Average opponent score: 27.7
Most of the time when the five-star wins their first career road start, it’s because the offense performed well. The winners scored at least 28 points in 15 of the 19 wins and they scored 35+ in 8 of them. The lowest total was Brock Vandagriff pulling out a 20-17 win for Kentucky over Ole Miss last season after he transferred from Georgia. The lowest for a non-transfer was Kyle McCord for Ohio State in 2023 beating Indiana 23-3 while the Hoosiers were in the post-Penix but pre-Cignetti wasteland. Given the Buckeyes connection and the level of talent surrounding them, McCord may be one of the better comparisons to make to Sayin.
When we look at the losses, there were definitely a few occasions where the defense was to blame. DJ Uiagelelei lost his first career road start 47-40 at Notre Dame in an all-time classic that tricked us into thinking DJU would end up being really good. But for the most part those losses were because the offenses just never got into gear. The losers scored 20 or fewer points in 12 of the 14 games including four that were in single digits. One of those paltry performances was Arch Manning in the first game of this season at Ohio State in a 14-7 Texas loss.
There have been four instances for five-star QBs that happened in 2025 so far and all of them lost their first career road start. In addition to Manning at Ohio State you had Bryce Underwood’s 24-13 loss for Michigan at Oklahoma, Ty Simpson’s 31-17 loss for Alabama at Florida State, and who could forget Malachi Nelson’s 28-16 loss for UTEP at Utah State.
That tells us about the team performances, but what about the individual quarterbacks? Here are some key indicators separated out by the wins and the losses.
In Wins: 63.9% comp, 248 yards, 8.4 YPA, 2 TD, 0.5 INT, 0.4 FUM, 6.4 BTT%, 2.3 TWP%, 105.9 NFL Rating
In Losses: 53.0% comp, 193 yards, 6.2 YPA, 1 TD, 0.8 INT, 0.8 FUM, 4.4 BTT%, 5.5 TWP%, 71.8 NFL Rating
The quarterbacks that ended up winning didn’t necessarily throw the ball a ton to get the job done but they were efficient when they threw it and only gave up about one turnover per game. For comparison, Jake Browning threw for 8.1 YPA, 5.6 BTT%, 3.2 TWP%, and a 105.2 NFL Rating during the 2017 season. So those 5-stars in their road wins played at a level generally a little bit better than Browning in the post-John Ross era. That’s still a pretty good quarterback.
The losses were a different story. The losers had a turnover-worthy play rate more than double compared to the winners with half as many touchdowns and 33% fewer yards per attempt. Only two P4 quarterbacks last year with at least 320 dropbacks had worse than 6.2 YPA and none had a TWP% of 5.5 or worse. In the losses those 5-star QBs basically turned into the worse quarterback in the power conferences.
So far though all I’ve really done is say that quarterbacks that win games put up better stats than ones that lose games. Duh.
So let’s try to narrow in on closer comps to Sayin. What if we only compare based on the point of their career in which the quarterback made their first career start? Here are the team stats separated out by year.
True Freshman: 8-6 record; Average score: 27.1, Average opponent score: 20.2
Redshirt Freshman: 7-3 record; Average score: 35.2, Average opponent score: 17.4
Redshirt Sophomore: 1-4 record; Average score: 14.6, Average opponent score: 21.4
Redshirt Junior: 3-1 record; Average score: 24.8, Average opponent score: 23.5
The unfortunate news for Washington is that the highest performers were pretty clearly the group that made their 1st career road start in their second year which is the bucket that Sayin falls into. And I think that makes some amount of sense. If a 5-star QB is thrown into the fire as a true freshman it probably means the team didn’t have a good alternative option at the position and so might not be ready to truly contend. If it takes until years 3 or 4 then it probably means they weren’t good enough to force their way into the starting lineup sooner and maybe had to transfer to find their opening to start. The sweet spot are the ones who were able to sit and learn the offense for a year but showed enough talent that the coaching staffs knew they were okay to take over in their second season.
Here’s what the QB stats look like broken out by year:
True Freshman: 54.8% comp, 221 yards, 7.3 YPA, 1.5 TD, 0.8 INT, 0.6 FUM, 4.5 BTT%, 3.9 TWP%, 87.5 NFL Rating
Redshirt Freshman: 66.7% comp, 220 yards, 7.9 YPA, 2 TD, 0.5 INT, 0.5 FUM, 7.8 BTT%, 2.5 TWP%, 107.2 NFL Rating
Redshirt Sophomore: 54.7% comp, 175 yards, 5.5 YPA, 0.6 TD, 1.2 INT, 0.4 FUM, 4.3 BTT%, 7.1 TWP%, 58.7 NFL Rating
Redshirt Junior: 61.9% comp, 314 yards, 9.3 YPA, 2 TD, 0.5 INT, 0.5 FUM, 4.8 BTT%, 1.5 TWP%, 106.5 NFL Rating
The stats for the 2nd year QBs look remarkably similar to just the winners with a slightly lower YPA mark but Big-Time Throw and Turnover-Worthy Play rates that were almost equal to what Michael Penix Jr. did his final year at Washington. Except the second year quarterbacks only threw the ball about 29 times per game so the yardage totals are much lower.
The quarterbacks in the RS Frosh category that won were Tua Tagovailoa (62-7 at Ole Miss), Justin Fields (51-10 at Indiana), Nico Iamaleava (51-10 at NC State), Quinn Ewers (49-0 at Oklahoma), Bryce Young (31-29 at Florida), Drew Allar (30-13 at Illinois), and JJ McCarthy (27-14 at Iowa). The quarterbacks in the RS Frosh category that lost were Spencer Rattler (37-30 at Iowa State), Jackson Arnold (26-14 at Ole Miss), and Cade Klubnik (28-7 at Duke).
Not all road environments are created equal of course. An absolutely rocking Husky Stadium is one of the more intimidating places to play in the country. But we don’t yet know how good Washington will end up being this season and won’t at least until we see the final result on Saturday. If the Dawgs are a 9+ win team however then it certainly boosts the odds of them getting this done. Only one of the 19 wins for the five-star QBs in this sample came against a team that won more than 8 games (Kentucky’s upset over Ole Miss last year). Here’s the breakout of record by opponent wins excluding the 2025 games for which we obviously don’t know the teams’ final records.
0-3 Wins: 3-0 record; Average score: 29.3, Average opponent score: 5.3
4-5 Wins: 5-2 record; Average score: 28.1, Average opponent score: 15.1
6-7 Wins: 4-0 record; Average score: 48.5, Average opponent score: 10.5
8 Wins: 5-2 record; Average score: 28.8, Average opponent score: 24.0
9+ Wins: 1-6 record; Average score: 20.1, Average opponent score: 29.3
There’s unsurprisingly a connection there between the quality of the opponent and the success in the road start. The only losses to teams who had fewer than 8 wins were quarterbacking for Northwestern and Texas A&M so they weren’t for schools that put up consistent double-digit win seasons. Both of the losses to 8-win teams happened within the first two games of the season so they were catching those teams relatively early.
If Washington lives up to the early expectations they’ve set for themselves and they wind up winning 8+ games then it suggests this is probably going to be a one-possession game. A blowout loss wouldn’t necessarily be damning on that front. Indiana lost 51-10 to Justin Fields and Ohio State and recovered to win 8 games (in Michael Penix’s 2nd season although he didn’t play in that game). But if the Huskies can’t at least keep it close with Sayin making his first career road start then history says it may be tough to live up to the ceiling this group has. We’ll find out how it plays out on Saturday.
