Frank Solich announced Monday morning that redshirt junior Derrius Vick will be Ohio’s starting quarterback to begin the season against Kent State.
For Vick, it’s an honor, but it wasn’t his end goal for the season.
“That was never my goal,” Vick said. “Our goal has been to get to the MAC Championship. It’s great to be named the starter but at the same time it doesn’t change anything.”
Although Vick was dubbed the starter, Solich plans to play a second quarterback at some point during the game. He mentioned that the competition was as close as it can get.
“On any given day you could say the other one practiced as he would if he were the starter,” Solich said. “The experience that Derrius has going into the season weighed a little bit in terms of him being named the starter.”
He said Vick and JD Sprague will get opportunities to play at a high level this weekend, but they’re not going to play a second quarterback just because they said they will.
“Obviously, when you name a starting quarterback you don’t pull him with one mistake and throw the other guy in,” he said. “There will be a rhyme and reason to why we do play a second quarterback.”
Vick says having two quarterbacks play in one game is nothing different for Ohio and they won’t gameplan any differently than they had in the past.
“Anytime the defense sees a new face that’s something you have to think about,” Vick said. “That’s just an added bonus for us if we can have multiple guys at different positions because that adds depth, they have more energy.”
Solich did say that true freshman quarterback Joey Duckworth will end up redshirting and redshirt sophomore Greg Windham impressed him in camp and will be third in the depth chart.
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