COLUMBUS, Ohio – For a play, you would take Braxton Miller. For a game, you would take Justin Fields. For a season, maybe you would take Dwayne Haskins. For a championship, you can take Cardale Jones.
For a decade? Yes, for a decade, maybe the quarterback you would take is JT Barrett. The Red Big Ten did it. As part of his Big Ten All-Decade team this week, Barrett was named Big Ten’s best quarterback for the past 10 years.
That could be the right decision. Or maybe it’s no better than fourth among Ohio State quarterbacks from 2010-19.
Two and a half years after he played his last game for Ohio State, Barrett is still everything you want him to be and everything you don’t think he is. He is heads and tails. He is yin for his own yang. He is the best quarterback among 14 teams in a 10-year span, and as a senior he was perhaps the third-best quarterback on his own team (behind Dwayne Haskins and Joe Burrow).
The Buckeyes may have won the 2014 national title because they got hurt and Cardale Jones took over. They may have won the 2017 college football tie if he had been cast for Haskins after a week 2 loss to Oklahoma. The Big Ten Quarterback of the Decade took over the two-time Big Ten Player of the Year after Braxton Miller fell in the 2014 preseason, and Barrett played with poise, skill, and maturity as a red-shirt freshman while preparing the Buckeyes for their playoff career.
However, Barrett was unable to win a preseason battle with Jones to open the 2015 season as a starter.
I think Big Ten Network was wrong with this election, and by listening to some of the voters (many of them Buckeyes, including Urban Meyer, James Laurinaitis, and Stanley Jackson) you could hear why they were wrong. Leadership and statistics. Leadership and victories. Wins and statistics. That’s what they kept going back to.
They admitted that there were questions about their launch. They admitted that perhaps he was not the most skillful type. But he wins, statistics and leadership. You might find criticism in the ways they had to praise him.
He threw 104 touchdowns in the decade, 27 more than second place, Trace McSorley of Penn State. He tied for fifth in the decade on all ten rushing touchdowns with Penn State’s Saquon Barkley, and the four boys ahead of him were all Wisconsin running backs.
It would put Fields ahead of Barrett on an OSB QB list, but would you name a boy who only played in 2019 as the Big Ten QB of the decade? How about Haskins, a one-year starter in 2018? What about Miller, who was 29th in yards passing in the Big Ten during the decade, while Barrett was fourth?
We’ve had this debate about Barrett before, while playing, and then after Haskins succeeded him, and then again after Burrow, now a transfer from LSU, won the Heisman Trophy. Barrett racked up wins and stats as a point guard on a talented team and, if given the opportunity earlier, Burrow and Haskins could have done the same. Except when Jones was given that opportunity after winning the job to open 2015, the OSU offensive never found anything close to a flow until Barrett resumed work.
When you played, you often wondered if someone is better. When he wasn’t playing, you wondered why he wasn’t there.
The best moment at the end of his career for Barrett was his return in the fourth quarter against Penn State in 2017, when he completed 13 passes in the quarter for 170 yards while, on his own, he achieved a miraculous 39-38 victory. He followed that up next week with the worst game of his career, as he was eliminated four times in a major loss in Iowa.
That is Barrett. That’s why I can confidently say that I would not have chosen him as the Big Ten’s quarterback.
I just have no idea who he would have chosen instead.
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