Julian Sayin: A fast processor, interrupted at Alabama, accelerating at Ohio State

JULIAN SAYIN HAS LIVED in Columbus, Ohio, for seven months. The middle-part-and-flip-flop-wearing California “diehard” is close to 2,300 miles away from Carlsbad but gets a taste of home at Everbowl on West Lane Avenue near the Ohio State campus.

Granola, banana, strawberries, blueberries – that’s his go-to acai bowl order, and it usually doesn’t change, although he’s known to add peanut butter to the smoothie-like dish that’s synonymous with San Diego and Los Angeles.

Sayin’s a serial repeat watcher of “The Office.” Except, that’s not what’s usually on his TV. Chances are, there’s a full-field view of an Ohio State football game he’s breaking down.

Julian Sayin, the friend and brother, is a light-hearted, dry-humored person who doesn’t take himself too seriously. Julian Sayin, the unanimous five-star quarterback, is all business.

So much so that he even brought one of his quarterback trainers with him on family vacations to Mexico.

Both versions of Sayin, however, are “particular,” bound by routine and process.

“He’s very structured,” his mother Karen Brandenburg told Lettermen Row. “He doesn’t like a lot of distraction. He can handle ups and downs. But he likes to be very organized, very structured in things around him and control what he can.”

He couldn’t control what happened just weeks into his college football career this past January. 

After 17 years and six national titles, Nick Saban, the greatest coach in college football history, retired from his post at Alabama, where Sayin had committed 434 days prior in November 2022. Alabama was the only school Sayin took an official visit to. He visualized himself playing for Saban. His parents were days away from buying a house in Tuscaloosa.

“It kind of blew his world up,” Brandenburg said.

APPROXIMATELY 3,300 PLAYERS ENTERED the FBS transfer portal during the 2024 cycle, according to On3. Reluctantly, Sayin was one of them.

The portal goes hand in hand with another round of recruitment, complete with hundreds of phone notifications and plenty of long conversations, several with prospective college coaches and some with those in a player’s inner circle. 

Ultimately, there’s a social media commitment announcement, then hundreds of additional phone notifications and, hopefully, a fresh start — often coupled with a chance to earn a starting role or boost NFL Draft stock, sometimes accompanied by an opportunity to win championships and, occasionally, all are on the table.

For many, it’s exciting. For Sayin, it was scary.

Alabama had been his dream.

“There was definitely a lot of emotions,” he said, “but I had my family to lean on. They helped me through it.”

When Saban announced his retirement during a rescheduled team meeting on Jan. 10, Sayin’s parents, as well as all three of his siblings, were in Tuscaloosa. At the time, Brandenburg and Dan Sayin, Julian’s father, were days away from closing on a new home.

“Yeah, I think Nick Saban could have given me a little wink, wink, nod when he came to our house and there were boxes packed,” Brandenburg joked. “He knew we were moving. 

“But, anyway, we loved him. Julian wouldn’t have done anything differently. He wanted the opportunity to play for him.”

After Julian joined the Crimson Tide for their Rose Bowl College Football Playoff semifinal trip — and even practiced with the scout team leading up to a heartbreaking, overtime loss to Michigan — the opportunity to play for Saban was suddenly gone. Not just for him but also for 20 other early enrollees who, in Brandenburg’s words, “were just kind of lost.”

The Sayin family took some of them out to dinner and checked in on others. 

Aidan Sayin, Julian’s older brother and now a senior starting quarterback at Penn, recounted the whirlwind experience, noting how there was “a lot of uncertainty in the air.” Julian didn’t put his name into the transfer portal until Jan. 19. Brandenburg was traveling for work that day, but Julian’s older sisters, Bailey and Jocelyn, took him to compliance at Alabama.

By that point, Julian got off social media, and he didn’t return for months. He, and his family, knew what was coming: an onslaught of commentary from Alabama fans and wishful thinking from other fan bases of potential suitors.

Julian stayed away from all of the hoopla and quickly went through his second recruitment. He had to act fast considering spring semester classes were starting up.

“Through that process, he didn’t really care where everybody else was,” Aidan said. “He just wanted to go to a place where he thought he could fit into the system, and really just get a shot to play in the NFL.”

Ohio State was one of the final schools Julian and his family spoke with while he was in the portal. Now in his sixth year as head coach of the Buckeyes, Ryan Day had already offered Julian when he was a high school recruit. Julian had been to Columbus once before, albeit when he was a high school underclassman. Still, there was some familiarity, bolstered by the fact that Day had just hired Bill O’Brien as his offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.

O’Brien served as Alabama’s OC and quarterbacks coach from 2021-22 and was part of Julian’s initial recruitment to the Crimson Tide. Granted, O’Brien is now the head coach of Boston College, and his time at Ohio State was a blink, but, back then, his pre-existing relationship with Julian only helped the Buckeyes’ chances in the portal.

“I just remember Ryan Day standing out as being very transparent, very clear and very honest, which we really appreciated,” Brandenburg said. “He said, ‘It’s not gonna be easy. You have a very full room. But we believe in you, we believe in what you can bring.’”

Brandenburg said it was a “good talk,” the brutally honest kind she believes should be more common in the recruiting process nationwide — the first time around, not just in the portal. And, so, two days after hitting the portal, Julian committed to Ohio State.

“I definitely made the right decision coming up here,” said Julian, who described Day as a “quarterback whisperer.” 

“It came with a lot of factors, but, really, I just wanted to be at a school with great tradition, great quarterback history and somewhere I can develop.”

Julian became the fifth scholarship quarterback on the Buckeyes’ 2024 roster, including the second top-five On3 Industry Ranking quarterback from his class, joining Air Noland, a four-star product of Langston Hughes High School in Fairburn, Georgia.

Competition has never scared Julian. He yearns for it.

THE YOUNGEST OF FOUR kids, Julian was always “scrapping” with his siblings. Bailey, 29, played soccer at University of Chicago. Jocelyn, 24, was a standout soccer and beach volleyball player in her own right. And Aidan, 21, is currently one of the best quarterbacks in the FCS.

Julian fell right in line while constantly trying to get to the front of it.

That drive manifested a particularly ambitious back-and-forth between the Sayin brothers. First growing up in Solana Beach, a beach town 20 minutes south of Carlsbad, Julian and Aidan spent their days by the water. Aidan remembers the sun-induced blond streaks in Julian’s naturally tree trunk brown hair. They’d boogie board and body surf for hours in the Pacific.

Back at home, they were duking it out on either EA Sports NCAA Football 12, 13 or 14. That was their go-to video game franchise, which now, more than a decade later, includes Julian as a playable character in the recently-released EA Sports College Football 25.

“All those times where we were playing, and I would beat him, but he wants to play one more — see if he could get me,” Aidan said, “just playing anything: basketball, football, video games. Anything where, you know, it may go down in tears, but he’s still ready to run it back another time right after, trying to get that win.”

Jose Mohler has enjoyed a front row seat to the sibling seesaw. 

Mohler, a graduate of La Costa Canyon in Carlsbad, was a quarterback at FCS North Dakota State and Division II Central Washington University before launching an American football career in Europe. He played for the New Yorker Lions in the German Football League, the Cologne Falcons in the American football Regionalliga — also in Germany — the Bergamo Lions in the Italian Football League and the Lausanne Owls, who are currently part of Switzerland American football league Nationalliga B.

In between his seasons in Europe, he came back to Carlsbad to coach his nephew’s Pop Warner team. Aidan was the quarterback of that team. There came a day when Brandenburg pulled Mohler aside and asked if he could give private lessons. That started a lifelong friendship between Mohler and the Sayin family, and it put into motion what is now known as Left Coast Athletix, Mohler’s business that provides mentorship and development for quarterbacks throughout the San Diego area.

Then going into seventh grade, Aidan was Mohler’s first client. But Julian was a close second because he punked his way into Aidan’s three-to-four throwing sessions a week as a soon-to-be fourth grader.

“There’s always been that competitive nature with him and his brother,” Mohler said. “They have this playful joy toward one-upping one another or calling one another out with accountability.”

They’re still at it. Mohler said that, whether it was Julian’s execution in the Ohio State spring game — where he threw an interception — or Aidan’s last game of the 2023 Ivy League season — during which Penn lost a one-score game to Princeton — both of them continue to offer constructive feedback to each other.

“That’s such a great collaboration for competitiveness,” Mohler said. “That has been built over a lot of years of them spending a lot of time together.”

Their father, Dan, had a ball in their hands right away. He coached their flag football and Pop Warner teams. Dan helped them learn the game, taking time to go over plays with them. But he also challenged his sons, notably always playing Julian up in age and starting other kids at quarterback over both Julian and Aidan at the youth level.

Aidan responded with serenity, and so did Julian.

“We just saw this calmness in him that was just like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this. I don’t care if you put me in at the end of the game, I’m going in and taking care of it,’” Brandenburg said of Julian. 

“He’s just always been very old soul kind of mature. … He just never gets ruffled, and maybe that’s being the youngest, but this journey has been easy with him in the sense that he doesn’t get too high, he doesn’t get too low.”

FLORIDA STATE OFFERED JULIAN when he was in eighth grade.

Kenny Dillingham, now the Arizona State head coach but at the time the FSU offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, was the first college coach the Sayins had a close relationship with during Julian’s recruitment.

Brandenburg remembers Dillingham talking about the potential he saw in her son.

“I remember Julian was in the car hearing all this and just got out of the car and went to the beach with his friends,” Brandenburg said. “Later on, his dad and I were talking, and we’re like, ‘Wow, this is incredible. Like, this is surreal to us.’

“And I said, ‘Did you say anything?’ He said, ‘No, because it’s not a real offer yet, mom.’ He was so grounded about it.”

That’s when Brandenburg realized that Julian knew how to “take it all in.” Laughing, she noted how Julian has kept her and Dan mature throughout the years, especially when it comes to social media. Brandenburg said you’re not allowed to tell Julian you saw this or that on X, even the good stuff.

He doesn’t want to hear it. Julian’s laid back, yes, but he’s also humble. Aidan said he tried to help keep Julian that way. Really, though, all three of Julian’s siblings held him accountable, even in joking ways, like “big deal that you got this or that,” Brandenburg said. 

Julian’s always been fixated on how he’s going to prove himself next. When he was in middle school, he pushed to attend Winner Circle Athletics, a charter school more than an hour’s drive away in Corona, California, for students in grades 4-8. He woke up at 5 a.m. every day, in large part for an opportunity to play for the Empire Sun Devils, a youth team with a different demographic of kids than his local Pop Warner squad.

When Julian was in sixth grade, he went ahead and DM’d Danny Hernandez, a well-known quarterback trainer in Los Angeles who has trained professional, college and high school players. Julian wasn’t scared of Hernandez’s resume, or by the fact that he’d be one of the youngest quarterbacks working in with elite Southern California signal callers.

“He would just go get in line,” Brandenburg said. “That was the one thing Danny said about him — he kind of just jumps in, right in the mix.”

Julian didn’t stop moving that way, not when he reached high school, either. His head coach and play-caller at Carlsbad High, Thadd MacNeal, kept him on that trajectory.

“I know people think he has this California vibe,” said MacNeal, who has known Julian since he was in fourth grade. “But, man, there’s a very, very strong intensity within him.”

MacNeal added: “He has this confidence and this inner-drive.”

WHEN JULIAN WAS A high school underclassman, MacNeal accompanied him for a visit to Georgia.

“We sat in every quarterback meeting, and by the third day, he was answering questions before some of the kids that were already enrolled there,” MacNeal said. 

“He retains things very, very quickly. So when you have a volume of an install, he’s gonna be able to handle it.”

Aidan admitted that Julian picked up MacNeal’s Carlsbad High School offense faster than he did. Aidan saw that happening in real time when he was a senior and Julian was a freshman. Aidan conceded he wasn’t always sure of what reads he should have been making — not just as an underclassman but, at times, as a junior, too.

That wasn’t the case for Julian, even at the beginning of his high school career.

“I think that was really when you first could see his ability to absorb a playbook and scheme,” Aidan said.

As a freshman in 2020, Julian backed up Aidan but played the second half of blowout wins. Aidan considers that mini, five-game season “the most fun I’ve had playing football.” Aidan pointed out how, in the final game, Julian threw a touchdown pass to one of Aidan’s best friends who hadn’t played the entire season, or throughout his high school career.

Julian went from making highlights in the third and fourth quarter of runaway wins to taking the reins as the starter as a sophomore. 

“I know people think he has this California vibe. But, man, there’s a very, very strong intensity within him.”

Thadd MacNeal, Carlsbad High School head football coach

Carlsbad was down by five points with less than two minutes to go in its standing-room-only Homecoming game against Torrey Pines. Julian led his team down the field for a game-winning touchdown drive, which culminated in him dialing up a 14-yard comeback pass with practically no time left on the clock.

The ball was on its way by the time the receiver was coming out of his break, Julian hit him right near the pylon, and he tapped his feet in the end zone for the last-second score.

“To be able to do that in a clutch situation, really, was I think a great turning point for him,” MacNeal said.

“When the game was on the line, he would put the ball exactly where it had to be put. And that’s when I started to think, ‘this kid’s different.’ Just because of his command of the offense, and then the ice in his veins, where he never flinched.”

Julian was an extension of MacNeal on the field. He knew where to throw it and when not to throw it, as evidenced by the 24:1 touchdown-to-interception ratio he posted as a senior.

MacNeal put a lot on Julian’s plate. Brandenburg called it the “AP class of football” because it wasn’t just plug and play.

Mohler mentioned how Julian was dealing with a bunch of pre-snap theatrics in high school, such as shifting tight ends from one side of the formation to the other. MacNeal let Julian control protections and, occassionally, call directions of runs. Mohler pointed out how Julian changed the direction of a run play in the early moments of a California Interscholastic Federation San Diego Section Open Division Championship, and it went the distance for a breakaway touchdown.

“So it goes beyond throwing,” Mohler said. “The best ones can always get the offense into a good play, especially when they have that connection with their head coach, and their head coach gives them the leash to do that.”

MacNeal noted: “He’s my 18th quarterback that’s gotten to play college. But he’s arguably the best one, for sure.”

AT ONE POINT, JULIAN was On3’s top quarterback in the 2024 class. He finished No. 2, only behind dual threat DJ Lagway, a star from Willis, Texas, who now plays for Florida.

Lagway had a monster senior season, however, Julian had the best junior film of any quarterback that cycle, according to Charles Power, the director of scouting and rankings at On3. 

Power described Julian as a “high-level processor” with strong natural mechanics and as the most accurate quarterback in the class, referencing his 75.5% completion percentage as a senior at Carlsbad High School.

“In every setting we saw him play — and that’s starting with Friday nights, seeing him in the 7-on-7 setting, seeing him at the Elite 11 Finals — he had a consistency of performance that was extremely impressive,” Power said.

Although Power wouldn’t go as far as saying Julian’s the physical talent of Ohio State-turned-Houston Texans star quarterback C.J. Stroud, Power believes Julian and Stroud are similarly surgical in how they operate with precision, timing and ball placement.

At Big Ten Media Days this summer, Day brought up another former Ohio State quarterback, the late Dwayne Haskins Jr., who possessed a twitch from the waist up that Julian displays. The ball jumps out of their hands on tape while their minds are moving just as fast.

Mohler illustrated how Julian was brought up in the West Coast offense: He’s very decisive, he knows how to attach his eyes and his feet to a concept.

“Mechanically, I’ve never really seen anybody better than him,” said Mohler, who described Julian as a proximal thrower, meaning his arms stay close to his center, compared to Aidan, who Mohler distinguished as a distal thrower, meaning his arms get further away from his center.

Mohler said Julian reminds him of a more refined version of Tony Romo, a San Diego native and a former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who made four Pro Bowls. With a lightning quick, three-quarters motion that almost goes around his body rather than over the top, Julian can generate significant spin on the ball.

“It spins aggressively,” Mohler said. “We call it a ‘Canadian spiral’ because it’s just like a straight white circle.”

Julian is currently listed at 6-foot-1 and just over 200 pounds on the Ohio State roster. He’s not going to have the best measurables, although he is one of five Buckeyes quarterbacks who offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said clocked in 20 miles per hour or faster this offseason. It’s not how fast Julian moves that’s intriguing, it’s the way he moves.

“Whether it’s the way he takes a drop from under center or the way he evades, he has a very graceful rhythm to the way he plays,” Mohler said. “He is very, very good at being able to manipulate arm angles.”

Mohler went on: “He’s, in my opinion, with my community, the best ‘shapeshifter’ we have. … When you watch him play, it’s very entertaining. It’s very graceful. He makes things look really, really easy.”

Power alluded to it, but the Elite 11 Finals is the most prestigious high school quarterback competition in the country. It takes place annually and spans three days in Los Angeles, where the most highly-touted passers in the nation showcase their arm talent in on-field drills the summer before their senior year.

At the end of the event, the Elite 11 MVP is named. Last year, Julian earned that honor — or seized it, rather.

“It was apparent at Elite 11 as well, he kind of has an alpha personality,” Power said. “I think all the other quarterbacks, if you were to take a poll of them and say, ‘Who was the MVP?’ They would all say him. I think he just kind of owned the situation.”

NOT LONG AFTER THE Elite 11 Finals, Julian met with Saban inside his office at Alabama. 

“We were in his office and Nick said, ‘Oh, congrats on Elite 11. How’d you feel?’” Brandenburg recalled. “And [Julian was like], ‘Yeah, it’s on to the next thing.’ 

“Nick Saban ate that up. He’s like, ‘Exactly.’”

At the time, Brandenburg joked with both Julian and Saban that Julian wouldn’t even let her take him out to dinner the night he was named Elite 11 MVP.

“And Nick Saban was like, ‘Yeah, because there’s always the next thing that you have to prove yourself.’”

Julian didn’t have to hear that from Saban to know it. He already embodied that mindset. The Elite 11 Finals ended on a Friday that summer. Later that day, he was participating in pool play for the OT7 Championship — a 7-on-7 tournament hosted by sports media company Overtime — in Huntington Beach, California. 

Flash forward to Sunday, and he emerged as the MVP of the event. Julian was clearly the top quarterback there, according to Power, who said Julian might have put on a better performance at the OT7 Championship than he did at the Elite 11 Finals.

“It was among the better 7-on-7 performances I’ve seen from a quarterback,” Power said. “He didn’t have to go over there. But he went over there and had just a ton of fantastic throws.”

What stood out to Power is how Julian is always seeking out work. He went to several camps when he didn’t have to. He was committed to Alabama as a five-star prospect with a horde of other offers still on the table. Julian kept showing up, not to get noticed but to get better.

“When you watch him play, it’s very entertaining. It’s very graceful. He makes things look really, really easy.”

Jose Mohler, quarterback trainer and founder of Left Coast Athletix

A Los Angeles Chargers fan, Julian watches a lot of Justin Herbert. He’s also a fan of Joe Burrow, the star quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals. Like both of them, but Herbert in particular, Julian plays with a “quiet confidence.”

“He knows what he wants,” said Mohler, the quarterback trainer who traveled with Julian and his family for those vacations to Mexico, which included fishing and, of course, workouts.

“He doesn’t lie to impress other people. He’s very authentic in what he is looking for and what he wants from his process or his teammates, and he’s very willing to stand up when somebody crosses that line. I’m really interested to see how that maturation unfolds into a Big Ten, national, blue blood-caliber program.”

WHEN KELLY REPLACED O’BRIEN as Ohio State offensive coordinator, he made it clear that he wasn’t going to baby his freshmen. He threw them into the deep end.

For Julian, that meant getting reps with the first-team offense in spring ball. That also meant facing a defense that’s littered with NFL players and is coordinated by Jim Knowles, who, like Kelly, is known for his schematic wizardry.

“Julian is a very fast processor,” Kelly said this spring. “He sees things really well for a young player not having been exposed to a lot of college defenses. Especially what Jim does — Jim can make a young freshman quarterback cry with some of the stuff he does, but I never saw that with Jules.”

Kelly then talked about Julian in the same breath as the top overall prospect in the 2024 class, wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, who is expected to play starter-level snaps his first year with the Buckeyes.

“The compliment I would say about them is if you got here, and you didn’t know what class they were, you wouldn’t say that those guys are freshmen, in terms of how they pick things up,” Kelly said. 

“Sometimes freshmen act like freshmen. But the guys who are special, they don’t act like freshmen. They act like they’re football players, and those are two guys that are examples of that.”

The more a first-year player digests about the program they’re playing for and the system they’re playing in, the more confidence the staff has in them to perform.

Midway through training camp, Day said the most important thing for Julian is getting more reps. While his talent is hard to miss, he’s still learning the offense.

“The faster he learns, the faster he’s going to get on the field,” Day said. “He’s going to play a lot of football at Ohio State. When he gets on the field is going to be up to him.”

Will Howard is the starting quarterback for the Buckeyes right now. He officially earned that role 16 days before the season opener. The graduate transfer started 27 games and won a Big 12 title in four years at Kansas State.

Howard has, by far, the most game experience among the five scholarship quarterbacks on the 2024 Buckeyes roster.

Redshirt sophomore Devin Brown is next with 28 career pass attempts. He’s currently the backup, but the competition for QB2 is open, and Julian is “for sure” in the race, according to Day.

If Julian wins the backup job before or during the season, he’ll be one snap away from playing meaningful snaps at Ohio State as a true freshman. 

Aidan knows what that’s like: In the middle of the 2021 college football season, he went from scout team quarterback to starting quarterback in the span of three weeks. As a result, he became the first freshman at Penn to attempt a pass in a game in eight years.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily a ‘you got to be ready,’” Aidan said. “It’s a ‘you should already be prepared to be ready.’ You should be treating every day like you’re the starter.”

Aidan emphasized that “habits create your reality.”

Julian is a creature of habit. Whenever he gets a chance, he returns to Carlsbad to enjoy the training, acai bowls and beaches that he knows best.

From a very young age, he studied the top high school quarterbacks in the nation, as well as the colleges that commanded the AP Top 25. By the time he was making recruiting visits, he had an understanding of offensive coordinators in the power conferences, where they have coached and what style they like to coach.

He’s a deep but quick thinking football player nurtured in process, a process his family is trying to help maintain. 

Brandenburg and her husband Dan Sayin — who are originally from Maryland and Delaware, respectively — are putting roots down in Columbus now. Brandenburg said that moving with a top prospect like Julian is becoming more and more common for college football parents. It also made sense since Julian was the last kid out of the house. 

Plus, it allows the Sayin family to keep the distractions of the NIL era away from Julian. College football is unapologetically a business nowadays, and Julian isn’t about that, Brandenburg said. He is about his process. 

His process was interrupted at Alabama when Saban retired. His process is now being accelerated at Ohio State, where he lost his black stripe earlier than any other freshman quarterback since Urban Meyer introduced the post-practice honor in 2012.

Julian’s world isn’t being blown up this time. Close to 2,300 miles away from home, he’s right where he’s supposed to be.

Julian Sayin is a fast processor, after all.