Kyle McCord’s latest NFL stop is another reminder that Ohio State never quite got the quarterback it thought it had.
The Miami Dolphins acquired former Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord from the Green Bay Packers on Sunday in exchange for a 2028 sixth-round pick, according to multiple reports.
McCord will serve as the backup to Malik Willis after Miami traded Quinn Ewers a day earlier. The deal comes after McCord impressed in the Packers’ preseason, completing 46 of 70 passes for 446 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions.
For Buckeye fans, the news lands with a familiar mix of distance and unfinished business. McCord was supposed to be the next in the line after Dwayne Haskins, Justin Fields, and C.J. Stroud. Instead, his one season as the starter in 2023 became the first real quarterback disappointment of the Ryan Day era.
McCord threw for 3,170 yards and 24 touchdowns with six interceptions while completing 65.8 percent of his passes. Those numbers look respectable on a stat sheet. They did not look like Ohio State football. The offense lacked the explosiveness fans had come to expect.
Slow starts and shaky pocket presence lingered too long. Then came The Game. Michigan won 30-24 in Ann Arbor, and McCord’s late interception sealed another November failure. He finished 12-1 as a starter in Columbus but never delivered the signature moment or the consistent command the program demands.
McCord later admitted as much. “I’ll be the first person to admit I didn’t play my best football at Ohio State,” he said at the 2025 NFL Combine. Day wanted competition heading into 2024.
McCord chose the transfer portal and landed at Syracuse, where he put up huge volume numbers—4,779 yards and 34 touchdowns—that got him drafted in the sixth round by the Eagles.
Ohio State, meanwhile, replaced him with Will Howard and won the national championship. The split worked out better for the program than it did for the quarterback who left.
That is the Ohio State lens. McCord was a high-end recruit who became a serviceable but limited starter, then a portal success story at a lesser program. His preseason flashes in Green Bay and now a chance to be QB2 in Miami show he can still play. They do not rewrite 2023 in Columbus.
Buckeyes fans watched a quarterback who was good enough to win most games and not good enough to beat Michigan or silence the questions that followed him out the door.
McCord is 23 and still climbing. From an Ohio State perspective, the climb started later than it should have. The Scarlet and Gray moved on and won a title.
McCord is still looking for a real foothold in the league. Sunday’s trade is another chapter, not a rewrite of the one he left behind in Columbus.
