The Buckeyes and the Cornhuskers don't play every year as teams that sit in separate divisions of the Big Ten. The two teams have played five times since the Huskers joined the conference but this will be the fourth time in as many years that the two teams have played since the conference went to nine games and teams got to pick up an extra crossover contest.
Ohio State fans may struggle naming too many players on the upcoming opponent outside of players like quarterback Adrian Martinez, receiver JD Spielman and super recruit Wandale Robinson. But make no mistake, the Huskers have a fair amount of firepower on their roster.
The big question this year and with many years as of late is the defense. How will this team get stops and do they have enough of their own firepower to go against the elite teams in college football? The Buckeyes have broken the 50-point plateau three of the last four years and the one year that they did not, the 2018 season, the Buckeyes still got it into the mid-30s.
Nebraska is coming in off of a tough game against Illinois and well aware of what divisional foe Wisconsin did this past week in picking up a huge conference cross-divisional win. There will be plenty of pressure on the Huskers to try and keep pace and pull off what appears to be a pretty big upset in the eyes of the odds makers.
What do we really know about the Huskers this year? What does anyone really know about this team that was supposed to compete for the west crown and still could with only one loss on the year out of league? We go to Sean Callahan of HuskerOnline.com to get a little more intel on the next foe.
BuckeyeGrove: Nebraska already seems to be a little banged up through the first month of the season. What are your expectations on who will be available and who might not be able to go?
Sean Callahan: The two guy that are out for sure right now are starting safety Deontai Williams, who suffered a shoulder injury that required surgery earlier in the season.
The other big one is kicker Barrett Pickering. He’s been out all year with an unknown injury that happened obviously in non-contact. His back-up Dylan Jorgensen also got hurt at Colorado, so their punter Isaac Armstrong had to handle field goal duties since the Colorado game. Then Armstrong had three different kicks blocked vs. Northern Illinois and they’ve had to go with former Air Force kicker and now walk-on safety Lane McCallum. He missed an extra point and a field goal last week at Illinois. It’s been a real mess. It obviously plays a factor in everything from the quality of kickoffs, extra points and field goal decisions. They added another kicker from the UNL club soccer team to the roster as well.
Last week running back Maurice Washington left the game an apparent head injury, but he has practiced all week. Both left tackle Brenden Jaimes and safety Cam Taylor-Britt left the Northern Illinois games with injuries but played every snap last week at Illinois.
