ARLINGTON, Texas — Devin Brown hobbled over to Lincoln Kienholz and wrapped his arms around him. Brown whispered some words of affirmation into the freshman quarterback’s ear, patted him on the chest and then stumbled toward Ohio State’s tunnel. His limp was strong.

After Kyle McCord transferred to Syracuse, the Cotton Bowl was supposed to be Brown’s night, his opportunity to play four quarters of inspired football to show Ryan Day and the Ohio State football program that he was the quarterback of the future.

Day was going to use the Cotton Bowl to evaluate Brown’s ability and Ohio State’s quarterback room heading into the offseason. It was supposed to help Day make an informed decision about how to proceed: Transfer portal or no transfer portal?

The Cotton Bowl, instead, turned into a disaster for Ohio State.

The Buckeyes lost to Missouri, 14-3, after Brown was injured early in the second quarter. Brown tried to come back into the game on the following possession, but it was apparent he wouldn’t be able to play through it. He left the game and never came back. The Buckeyes turned to Kienholz, who hasn’t been in the program long enough to run a complete, effective offense. They finished with 203 total yards and converted two of 15 third downs.

The game was horribly ugly. And how to fix issues becomes immeasurably more complicated.

How is Day going to evaluate who should be Ohio State’s quarterback heading into an offseason with nothing to evaluate?

“I don’t have a great answer for that right now because this isn’t what we expected,” Day said after the game. “We didn’t have a game to look at, go through and evaluate. We know what we see in practice, but it’s different in a game. It’s so disappointing we don’t have that. We will go back to work and figure that part out. I don’t have an answer, though, because we didn’t get a game in.”

What makes Day’s decision so difficult is that Brown, a top-50 player nationally in the 247Sports Composite in the 2022 recruiting class, illustrates everything you’d want in a starting quarterback. The way he handled himself after another devastating injury is commensurate with the type of leader Ohio State has traditionally had at the quarterback position.

Even with Ohio State down in the fourth quarter and Brown sitting there helpless as his team struggled to get first downs, the large video board in AT&T Stadium zoomed in on his face on the sideline. He was cheering on Kienholz like he was the freshman quarterback.