Now-Ohio State freshman quarterback Matthew Baldwin looks to throw while at Lake Travis High School in Austin, Texas. Credit: Courtesy of Shelia Parodi

Ryan Day was a quarterbacks coach first.

His priority for the first two seasons with the Buckeyes has been the quarterback room, helping mold J.T. Barrett and Dwayne Haskins, players he inherited from the previous recruiting classes, into what he expects from his offense.

But Day seems to want his quarterback, a player he recruited to come to Ohio State, behind center when the 2019 season begins against Florida Atlantic on Aug. 31.

After former head coach Urban Meyer announced his retirement following the Rose Bowl on Dec. 4, Georgia freshman quarterback Justin Fields placed his name in the NCAA transfer portal, allowing other programs, such as Ohio State, to recruit him.

But waiting in the wings was Day’s first quarterback: Matthew Baldwin.

Baldwin is a quarterback who, if both Fields and redshirt freshman Tate Martell remained on the roster, would remain in the role he held during the 2018 season, a third-string spot with no clear path to the Ohio State starting job.

But with Martell announcing his transfer to the University of Miami Wednesday, Baldwin’s career with the Buckeyes seemed to clear up a bit, apparently placing him as the No. 2 quarterback on Day’s depth chart behind Fields heading into the 2019 season.

This was not the freshman’s focus during the 2018 season. His focus was to absorb everything he could by watching Haskins and Martell.

“Mentally, that’s probably been the biggest part of the season, just getting the playbook down, getting everything we want to do here down,” Baldwin said.

Baldwin was sidelined from the moment he arrived at Ohio State in January 2018. After leading Lake Travis High School to the 2017 state title game, he tore his ACL on the first play. He spent the majority of the off-season — the time when a quarterback was supposed to be learning the ropes — rehabbing and healing.

Up to the title game, Baldwin had left a big impression on the field, completing 71.8 percent of his passes for 3,842 yards with 44 touchdowns and six interceptions in his senior season, according to MaxPreps. This came off a junior season in which he threw 10 touchdowns and zero interceptions in 93 pass attempts.

Despite not being known as a mobile quarterback, comparing his style of play to that of Haskins, Baldwin averaged 5.2 yards per carry in his high school career with Lake Travis, recording 11 rushing touchdowns despite averaging 17.9 yards per game.

But for Day, Baldwin’s health left a big question mark as to where he will be heading into the spring practice of his redshirt freshman season.

Day said the knee injury still lingers with Baldwin, and while it has improved, “he hasn’t been able to really do much with the knee.”

“This spring will be obviously a huge kind of bar on where he is in his development,” Day said.

This was something Baldwin said he was worried about after the Big Ten Championship. He said he felt behind after not being able to compete in the first practices of fall camp, but instead turned his focus to season preparation for the players ahead of him on the depth chart.

However, when Day tells the story of how he found and eventually secured the commitment from 2019 five-star wide receiver and former Lake Travis teammate Garrett Wilson, he said it started because he was there to watch Baldwin throw. The interest from the head coach was there.

Baldwin matched the attributes Day wanted to see from his starting quarterback.

“Our philosophy in that area is competitive toughness, leadership, decision-making skills. Those are all the things that we look for in a quarterback,” Day said. “Not necessarily in there is how tall they are, how well they throw the ball. That’s obviously a part of it, but it’s more about all those things and the intangibles.”

Day saw this from Baldwin throughout the 2018 season, saying he did an excellent job in the meeting room, taking advantage of getting “mental reps” when he is on the field.

As Haskins took the starting quarterback job in Barrett’s place and ran with it, finishing No. 3 in the 2018 Heisman vote and earning the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year award, Baldwin continued to emulate Haskins’ confidence.

“You can’t be tentative. You can’t second-guess yourself,” Baldwin said. “You just got to go because if you do that, you get left behind, if you get all tentative and worrying about if you aren’t doing things right. You just have to go.”

Baldwin has not played a snap for Ohio State. However, with Fields’ eligibility for the 2019 season in question, he could enter the season as the Buckeyes’ starter.

He would be the player Day would want behind center. It would be his quarterback.

“In terms of throwing them out there to the fire, he’s still not quite ready for that,” Day said. “But this spring he’ll have that opportunity.”