With Ohio State’s season opener on Saturday, it was announced earlier this week that Kyle McCord would be the starter for the Buckeyes.

Dan Hope of Eleven Warriors joined “McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning” on Tuesday to explain why head coach Ryan Day decided to go with McCord as his starter.

Hope explained that McCord has been the more consistent quarterback through the past couple weeks of practice, and that led Day to lean towards him.

“It sounds like it has a lot to do with the consistency in practice over the last couple of weeks,” Hope said. “Kyle has finally pulled ahead in that race that has been so neck and neck for most of the offseason and it seems like over the past couple of weeks, Kyle’s been a little bit sharper. He ultimately gets the nod for Week 1.”

While McCord is the more experienced quarterback, getting reps last season, that isn’t the only reason why Day decided to give him the start.

“I thought they may just give Kyle the start solely based on, he’s the more experienced guy and with it that close, they’d give him the start,” Hope said. “But it did sound with the way Ryan Day talked yesterday that Kyle did actually earn the opportunity to be the starter for Week 1.”

But just because McCord gets the start in Week 1, he will still have to fight for the job moving forward.

“The competition isn’t over yet,” Hope said. “Ryan Day said yesterday that Devin Brown’s going to play in the game and that’s not something we’ve seen before going into a season where he’s still juggling a quarterback competition.”

McCord now gets the reins of an offense primed and ready to compete this fall in regard to the Big Ten Championship odds. He will try to have the offense firing on all cylinders with the Buckeyes looking to eclipse a 10.5-win total projection. Interested fans can take part in the action with our special FanDuel Ohio promo code.