Jim Tressel is a man with many responsibilities. Chances are good that, unless you're the president, or a coach yourself, you don't have nearly as much on your plate as JT. This may all seem obvious; Tressel has basic responsibilities to the program and to the fans, and those are the ones most people pay attention to. Frequently ignored, but no less important are his responsibilities to his players.  

When Terrelle Pryor's final slate of teams came down to a series of spread offenses (Florida, Oregon, Penn State, and Michigan) and one sorta-hybrid "power running"/"pro-style" system (Ohio State), Jim Tressel had to become a bit of a salesman. He knew that Pryor had previously expressed interest in becoming a "pro-style" quarterback; a guy who could take a five-step drop as easily as he could breathe, a guy who understood how to manipulate the pocket, and, most important, a guy who could throw - with accuracy - from a standing position, rather than on a rollout or otherwise on the run. He did not necessarily want to be the "next Vince Young". If you listend to him, he didn't want to be the next anybody. He wanted to be the only Terrelle Pryor. A close approximation of what he probably wanted to be was a bigger Troy Smith, and was likely enticed by what he saw in the Heisman winner's senior year.

 Smith had been, in his time, a project player; he had taken snaps at RB and as a kick returner in his younger days before finally settling into the QB position, getting thrust into the spotlight in place of the hapless Justin Zwick, and subsequent discovering new levels of awesome as a Buckeye QB. Smith was not highly drafted for a number of reasons. Aside from being short for an NFL signal caller, he had flubbed his final game as a Buckeye, didn't turn any heads at the combine, and his prior history of questionable decision-making made many teams hesitant to pull the trigger until the second day. His physical tools and his development as a passer kept him from going undrafted entirely.

Nevertheless, Pryor had before him the same man who had turned a talented-if-aimless afterthought into a Heisman winning, 30-touchdown-throwing machine with exactly one unsightly blemish on a stellar career. It's highly unlikely that a man as conservative as Tressel promised him futurre NFL riches (insert joke about Tressel paying him anyway here) as a QB, but it isn't a stretch to say that Tressel frequently implied, more or less, that Ohio State would turn Terrelle Pryor into a first-round draft pick as a quarterback. Whether or not Jim Tressel actually promised anything is not all that important; Pryor chose the Buckeyes over three offensive systems (Florida, Oregon and Michigan) with no proven history of producing pro-ready QBs and one that was just getting off its feet (Penn State's spread HD) with a couple competent, veteran QBs already waiting in the wings to take over. Semantically, this might not make much sense: Ohio State has no more of a history of successful pro QBs than Navy (and even the Middies have Roger Staubach), but, given Pryor's criteria, there wasn't much to choose from: he wanted to stay within reasonable distance of his ailing father in Pennsylvania, he wanted a system that could mold him into a pro quarterback (lack of production notwithstanding, Craig Krenzel and Troy Smith were draft picks), and he wanted at least a decent chance of starting relatively early in his career. The wisdom of Pryor's decision is, in my mind, officially still open for debate. I'm glad he's here, undoubtedly, but I can't say unequivocally that he wouldn't be better off somewhere else. But to the people who think he'd really be that much better off in Ann Arbor, Eugene, or State College: any offensive system, with the exception of the triple option on a particularly good day, will not function if the quarterback cannot make even the most basic of throws. Right now, Pryor can't. Not with any consistency anyway.

Back to Tressel's responsibilities. Again, it's highly unlikely that Tressel actually promised Pryor that he would be Peyton Manning by his senior year. I don't even know if he told him he'd be Kerry Collins. Nevertheless, when Pryor decided to go against the grind a bit and play for a team that doesn't necessarily best suit him - Oregon, Michigan, Florida, perhaps even Penn State might simply be better suited to take advantage of his particular talents - I think it came with a tacit compromise between Pryor and Tress. Pryor was willing to roll the dice with a different system if it meant he'd have the ball in his hands on every play on Sundays, rather than just when the QB feels like getting it to him. Whether he'd like to admit it or not, Tressel does have some responsibility to get Pryor ready for the next level. But he has another responsibility, and it's the most obvious one of all: winning games.

Right now, it isn't clear whether or not those two are compatible. Pryor is clearly struggling to learn the ins-and-outs of the pocket; I've said numerous times that his footwork is, erm, special. His arm is legit and (probably) pro-ready; his motion... well, I begrudgingly admit that the good folks at BSD were brilliant in terming the Pryorball the "arm punt", because let's be honest: that's what it is. We've seen at least one in every game this year, and it's not going away any time soon. Fortunately, much of what Pryor is doing wrong is correctable. But how long are we going to have to wait? Will it take until Pryor clearly costs us a game with yet another mechanical breakdown?

Barring massive, sudden improvement from the young signal caller over this next stretch of games, it seems Jim Tressel is presented with a choice between what may, at first, seem to be two unsexy options. In simplified terms, here they are:

Stay The Course

The hope here is that Pryor will learn from his mistakes, take his lumps in Happy Valley, against Iowa in Columbus, and (please God no) in Ann Arbor. With plenty of "don't do this" film to work with over the summer, Pryor will make massive strides in time for next September's showdown against the improved Miami Hurricanes, looking every bit the part of the competent, learned, if not excellent pocket passer.

Give In

Accept the very real possibility that Pryor needs more work than can reasonably be done at the college level, and utilize his (admittedly still impressive) talents as a runner as often as possible. Running like he might in this system would probably get him killed at the next level, but it just might give the team that extra offensive spark that might be needed to get over some big hurdles, chiefly the biggest in Happy Valley on November 7th. With a spectacular defense and a suddenly above-average offense, the Buckeyes might even nab that elusive big game victory.

Perhaps I make the "give in" scenario a tad too rosy, but if you remove the last sentence, the point nevertheless still stands. I'm trying to prevent a false dilemma here by saying that yes, Pryor can improve in the current system and the team could end up being a killer. However, through six games, it's not clicking, and thus, there isn't any really any reason to assume that it will, other than the general, and mostly-verified maxim that "Tressel teams always improve". It's frequently said that "the program is bigger than any player", and while I personally feel that's a meatheaded oversimplication, it could start applying here. If our young "program-savior" (the program needed to be saved?) doesn't step up his game, and soon, the real "program-savior/sustainer" will be forced to make some serious choices about where his team is headed that, no matter what, will have grander implications for the team and the program down the line.