J.T. Barrett Has Had It With The Jokes About His "Weenie Arm"

Ohio State QB J.T. Barrett went down with an injury last year, and in his absence Cardale Jones won a national title and was named starter for 2015, at least partially on the merits of his cannon of an arm. Well, Barrett’s back under center now, and he’s had a while to stew over perceived slights to his own throwing arm.

After yesterday’s practice, Doug Lesmerises of Cleveland.com asked a harmless question about whether and how much Barrett wants to make deep balls part of his game plan. Barrett’s response took more than three minutes.

From Lesmerises’s transcript:

“I don’t know what that was about. I threw deep balls the whole year and then Cardale’s in and it’s like, ‘He’s got a strong arm, he’s throwing the deep passes downfield.

“What?! What are you talking about? I threw the same passes.

“The thing is, now when a play breaks down and somebody is 80 yards downfield, am I going to throw it? Absolutely not. Cardale is going to throw it. I’m not going to throw that. So I feel like that’s different.

[...]

“It wasn’t aggravating me. I was just like, ‘Man, they’re trying to play me.’ I say ‘they’ meaning y’all media, I put you all as a group, I’m not pointing out individuals.

“I was just like, ‘That’s crazy to me.’ If you go back and watch film, it was just like I threw a lot of deep balls. Were some of them underthrown? Absolutely. That was earlier in the year, I got better as the year went on.

“But I was like, ‘Man, I got a weenie arm?’ Now in the off-season I was all in my head all the time lifting weights because I felt like I couldn’t throw the deep ball because y’all was talking about me.

“But I let it go, I let it go, I let it go.”

Barrett closed by saying that he’s been waiting a long time to talk about this. It does not sound like he has truly let go the talk about his weenie arm.

[ Cleveland.com]

Photo via AP.