Ohio State Buckeyes

Big Ten East QB races remain open as openers near

Published Aug. 24, 2015 12:14 p.m. ET

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Marcus Hartman

Quarterback competitions have dominated the discussion at more than half of the schools in the Big Ten East, but are any of them closer to being decided?

After big scrimmages of the weekend at Ohio State, Maryland, Rutgers and Michigan, the answer seems to be ... yes and no.

At Maryland and Michigan, one player got the majority of time with the first team while things are a bit murkier at Ohio State and Rutgers.

The Baltimore Sun was among those to report Perry Hills took the majority of first-team reps Saturday when the team held an open scrimmage in College Park, but head coach Randy Edsall told reporters no decision had been made yet.

"We will look at how they handle the huddle, how they handle the scrimmage, their production and those things are predictive of how they were evaluated the first two weeks of camp," Edsall said in remarks published by the athletics department. "So again, we will evaluate it after today and see where we are."

Hills, a junior who started seven games as a true freshman in 2012, is competing against Caleb Rowe, a junior who played four games last season before suffering a torn ACL, and Daxx Garman, a senior who transferred from Oklahoma State.

"We told everybody it was a competition," Edsall said. "If you tell kids that it's a competition and then go back and evaluate it on paper and don't go with what they are doing on the field that's when you have credibility problems. If we tell them this is what we are looking for and we are going to make decisions off of these things then we have got to stick to that."

Rather than a pure scrimmage, Michigan held a practice open to students on Saturday night in what was the first glimpse of coach Jim Harbaugh's Wolverines since media day at the beginning of camp.

While reporters were barred from the proceedings, MLive.com enlisted student Max Bultman to file a report on what students were able to see.

According to Bultman, senior graduate transfer Jake Rudock had the most opportunities with the first-team offense, which "appeared steady when Rudock was in at quarterback" as opposed to Shane Morris, a junior Harbaugh identified as his leader to be the starter coming out of spring practice. That declaration preceded the arrival of Rudock, who was a two-year starter at Iowa. 

While Rudock has an obvious edge in college playing experience, Morris is widely perceived to have a stronger arm. 

Bultman also noted Rudock was the beneficiary of better offensive line play than Morris in the scrimmage.

There were no comments from the coaching staff afterward, and it remains to be seen how much Harbaugh or anyone else will say about the quarterback battle leading up to the Wolverines' season opener Sept. 3 at Utah.

Reports out of New Jersey have the Rutgers QB battle seeming more like a dead heat between sophomores Chris Laviano and Hayden Rettig.

Coach Kyle Flood said both were very sharp in the scrimmage Saturday, and NJ.com reported they put up similar stats. While Laviano was 10 for 15 passing for 123 yards and three touchdowns, Rettig completed 10 of 17 passes for 144 yards and one score. Neither threw an interception.

While cautioning (as coaches always do) he needed to review the film before knowing for sure how he felt, Flood confirmed via remarks published by the athletics department he was getting close to making a decision.

"I think there's a minimal amount of time left until I feel like we need to make a decision and start moving forward toward the first game," Flood said.

Lastly, there is Ohio State. In a bit of a paradox, Urban Meyer might have the toughest decision in the country because he has the most information available to him for his choice.

Rare is the quarterback battle that includes a Heisman Trophy finalist and a Big Ten Championship Game MVP, but there is where Meyer stands as August begins to wind down.

Without identifying which was J.T. Barrett and which was Cardale Jones, Meyer told reporters Saturday just when he thought one of his candidates was pulling ahead in the race in Columbus, the other pulled back to even during the team's closed scrimmage.

Does that mean the defending champions are inching closer to a two-quarterback system? Jones and Barrett have both expressed concerns about such a setup, but it's hard to rule out at this point with the opener at Virginia Tech only two weeks away.

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