After Barrett went down with the season-ending injury in the Michigan game and was replaced by the rocket-armed Cardale Jones, many a pundit noted that the “12-Gauge” attached to Jones’ right shoulder seemingly added an element to the offense that they presumed lacking under Barrett. “It’s not really like a priority of mine to see how many yards I have during the game”. “I think the last two weeks, we’ve been very consistent”. “Like a year ago when I was playing, how many deep balls did I throw to Devin [Smith]?”. I’m not going to throw that. But I guess since I’m not 6-5 and 250 (Jones’ measurables) that I didn’t have a strong arm or something. “I didn’t know what that was about”. “Nothing changed when I got hurt, Cardale was throwing the balls to Devin Smith, who is a great deep ball catcher, so there wasn’t anything different”. What helped him and later Jones in that endeavor was the presence of deep-ball threat Smith, now with the New York Jets. And same thing this year. Can a quarterback throw an out route to the wide side of the field with enough power to beat a cornerback breaking on the ball? It was our base plays, and we just worked within that. The Ohio State quarterback laughed at the end of the question admitting that he forgot what the original question was but that this was something that he had been wanting to say. I wanted to say that for a long time, I’m going to be honest with you…. “What? What are you talking about?”
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“The thing is when a play breaks down and somebody’s 80 yards downfield, am I going to throw it? I just tried to focus on myself on what I could do to get better and from there I got better as a person, first, and then as a football player as well”. “But I feel that’s different”. And it just so happened that for example, the Wisconsin game, they were bump-and-run man, they were forcing you to go over the top. I can do the same things. It wasn’t anything different.
I never bought that idea, and when asked Meyer never really did either.
Barrett said he wasn’t aggravated but questions about his arm strength did get to him.
“It wasn’t aggravating me”, said Barrett. All the deep balls that we had were to Devin and I threw them. Were a few of them underthrown?
“Sometimes (Barrett) gets those long ones because the whole defense is collapsing on me”, Elliott joked with a group of reporters at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center on Wednesday.
And let the numbers bare witness…J.T. does go deep.
The seeds of J.T. Barrett’s “weenie arm” rant after practice Wednesday were planted in the moments after Ohio State’s 42-35 College Football Playoff semifinal win over Alabama on January 1.
In 2014, Barrett had 203 total completions and 28 completions of 25 or more yards (13.8 percent). Sure, his completion percentage isn’t better than Jones’ but it’s not too far off, either. This season, there as not been as much of a discernable difference.
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For the record, Barrett averaged 9.03 yards per attempt in his 12 starts last season; he averaged 12.38 in his lone start this season in Week 8 against Rutgers.
