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'You can just tell': How Ohio State is helping develop 2025 QB commit Tavien St. Clair
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- 'You can just tell': How Ohio State is helping develop 2025 QB commit Tavien St. Clair
Sidney High School seemed to be expecting a different-looking Tavien St. Clair .
In Bellefontaine High School football's season opener, the Yellowjackets were bringing everything they had up front, showing consistent pressure against the junior quarterback and Ohio State commit.
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But St. Clair took Sidney's defensive game plan in stride, sliding out of the pocket and using his athleticism to extend plays, relying on horizontal pass plays such as shovel passes, slants and screens to consistently move the ball downfield.
No matter what St. Clair faced in Friday night's 46-19 win, his job description never changed.
"My job as a quarterback is just to get the ball to my playmakers in space," St. Clair said. "They showed tonight that when I do that, good things happen for us."
Bellefontaine doesn't have the same kind of quarterback leading the offense as it did last year. Now, it has a quarterback that has already started to develop under Ohio State quarterbacks coach Corey Dennis .
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And one game into the 2023 season, Bellefontaine coach Jason Brown is seeing the difference.
Aug. 18, 2023; Bellefontaine, Ohio, USA; Ohio State football 2025 quarterback commit Tavien St. Clair threw for more than 300 yards and five touchdowns in Bellefontaine's season-opening win against Sidney.
"As (St. Clair) has grown and this process has played out, his maturity, both physically and mentally, has really, really jumped," Brown said. "It's skyrocketed ... The game's really slowed down for him, you can just tell."
How Corey Dennis helped 2025 QB Tavien St. Clair develop
Jake Kennedy remembers St. Clair as the Chieftans' "gunslinger."
Bellefontaine's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach said St. Clair had more of a "grip-it-and-rip-it mentality" during his first full season as the team's starting quarterback in 2022, never knowing what he was going to see from snap to snap even while he completed better than 70% of his passes for 2,453 passing yards and 25 touchdowns.
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As a junior, Kennedy said, St. Clair is now developing more of an understanding with each play call.
"Now it's starting to get to a point where I'm calling a play and he's starting to realize, see the defense and see 'OK, this is why we're calling the play,' " Kennedy said.
At Ohio State's 7-on-7 recruiting camp this summer, St. Clair said Dennis was working with him on that understanding, asking him about his looks and what he was seeing on each play he ran.
That conversation continued as St. Clair prepared for his junior season.
"I've watched a lot of Ohio State highlights recently just to see what things work," St. Clair said. "And I'll send them to my offensive coordinator and I'll ask coach Dennis about what the play was there and how they manipulated the defense."
Brown said St. Clair's decision making is what separated Bellefontaine on Friday, seeing a quarterback that never forced the ball downfield, but kept a balanced approach, attacking both horizontally and vertically and scrambling when he needed to.
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In his 2023 debut, St. Clair finished with 314 passing yards and five touchdowns — breaking a school record previously held by Kennedy — while completing 77.8% of his 36 pass attempts. He also added 36 rushing yards on four carries.
"In the amount of time he's spent at Ohio State with coach Dennis (and) with coach (Ryan) Day, certainly some of the small coaching points that they have related to him showed up out there tonight," Brown said. "He's polished, even more than he's been. And we felt pretty good about where he was."
Tavien St. Clair is ready for 'all eyes' on him
For St. Clair, Bellefontaine's 2023 story has only begun.
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The 2025 four-star, who is ranked as the No. 144 player and No. 9 quarterback in the country per 247Sports' composite rankings, has his sights set on a state championship.
But he's also already looking ahead, doing whatever he can to prepare for the next level.
"We talk a lot around here about getting 1% better," St. Clair said. "So getting 1% better every day physically, mentally just so that when I make that transition to college football, it's a little bit easier. It will also be easier for the coaches in college if I can kind of slow it down now."
Even as Ohio State's only 2025 commit, St. Clair doesn't feel any pressure. The attention is something he's welcoming.
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"Some people outside think it'd be a lot of pressure," St. Clair said. "But this is what I wanted for a long time. All eyes on me is OK with me."
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: How OSU football is helping develop 2025 QB commit Tavien St. Clair
