Ohio State football: Corner injuries a blessing in disguise

The Ohio State football team has had an issue with health this year. On both offense and defense, they have struggled to play a complete game with everyone available. Recently, corners have started dropping like flies. The Buckeyes had to beat Wisconsin without their top three corners.

Denzel Burke will be back this week for the Rutgers game, but Cam Brown and Jordan Hancock are still out. Because of that, Jyaire Brown and J.K. Johnson will get a lot of playing time again according to Ryan Day. Both freshmen were thrust into starting roles last week.

In those roles, they actually played pretty darn well. It’s hard for two corners who hardly played to be thrown into the fire like that and perform well in a night game, but they did. These corner injuries have turned into a blessing in disguise for the Buckeyes.

That’s because the injuries have forced the Ohio State football team to build depth at that position because they have no other option. This will be valuable down the line against a tougher opponent if the injuries persist. It means the coaches won’t freak out if they have to play Johnson or Brown extended snaps.

Hopefully, the Buckeyes don’t need to do that. In an ideal world, the starters are healthy enough to play the big guns like Penn State and TTUN. If they aren’t though, Johnson and Brown are getting enough experience that putting them in wouldn’t be a massive drop-off.

You never want to see injuries happen. But in this case, this might be something that ends up being good for the Ohio State Buckeyes in the long run. They can develop corners for this year and for next year once Brown leaves.

I’d expect both Johnson and Brown to play well again this week.