Did Buckeye Chuck See His Shadow

The Buckeyes' season began with injuries at quarterback. The knee that Jeff Traylor tore in a preseason game went down during the Iowa State game with him losing several places on his foot and knee and not ruling out the idea of Traylor making a full recovery from this devastating injury. When he came back, Traylor was injured for the second game. Although he was declared out for the rest of the season, he returned to start the game and he threw for 132 yards.

But as the season progressed, Traylor's knee started to decline. He was facing the possibility of having to sit out a whole season if he could not play consistently. After he was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his ankle during Iowa's win over Nebraska with Traylor no longer starting, the Buckeyes decided to put him on the physically unable to play list to rest the ankle, while keeping the leg healthy. By the time they re-injured their offensive linemen, the ankle had almost completely shattered. This would have been Traylor's fifth season on the sidelines.

In Buckeye history, only two quarterbacks played all of their games in their first year in December. In both cases, it was a Tommy Bohanon. However, Bohanon had an overall better season and was the youngest quarterback to start at Nebraska.

Sitting All Last Seasons as a Buckeye

Trent Dilfer, 1,694 career passing yards

Trent Dilfer is one of the greatest quarterbacks we've ever had. He's my favorite of all the Buckeye quarterbacks and he's the Buckeye because we weren't led by other quarterbacks like we were during the Bo Bowman era, that was the reason we lost in that big game in '65, '66. He was the face of the football team, he was the quarterback that was going to be the starter, the guy we looked to from the get-go. I said probably starting, and he was our first real chance to do that because we, I'm a Chicago boy, and we had that whole All-State team coming to help us out, but that was all guys that were already starters. Then, since his freshman year, we had two high school quarterbacks and he was one of them.