The Ohio State Buckeyes face the biggest week of their college football season.
Saturday brings The Game against Michigan. The Wolverines have won four straight in this rivalry.
Ohio State won the national title last season. For some fans, that still wasn’t enough to make up for the Michigan loss.
The stakes for Saturday’s game are particularly high. It doesn’t mean much for playoff impact for Ohio State, though Michigan could make an at-large case with an upset. But it means everything for the psyche of Buckeyes nation.
That makes the injury questions coming out of Columbus quite concerning.
Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate both sat out Saturday’s win over Rutgers with lower-body injuries. Both receivers are considered day-to-day.
That was Smith’s first missed game. Tate has now missed a couple of games.
Smith might be the best player in all of college football. Tate is one of the nation’s top receivers in his own right.
They’re a huge asset to Ohio State when healthy and a huge miss when they’re out.
The tough part this week is that OSU head coach Ryan Day is very unlikely to give much away. College teams don’t have to follow the same stringent injury reporting rules as the NFL.
It’s very possible that Smith and Tate’s availability won’t be known until pregame warmups Saturday.
Their status could decide that game. It could decide whether the Buckeyes break the streak.
It could decide the mood of people in Columbus for the entire holiday season.
Updates will be sparse. But every snippet that emerges from OSU about Smith and Tate will be viewed as a huge deal.
