The Nebraska football team already knew it was likely playing against UCLA without Tommi Hill. While he tried to practice this week, his foot injury has been something that’s been nagging enough they had to be prepping as though he wouldn’t be there.

However, Malcolm Hartzog also being out on Saturday is the kind of news a team trying to win its sixth game in a season for the first time in 2016 wants to hear. Especially when the obvious fill in for Hartzog is a redshirt freshman.

Whether or not the Nebraska football team wanted to hear that kind of thing, it’s the news that was delivered on Thursday afternoon by head coach Matt Rhule. In his final press conference of the week the HC delivered the bad news.

Nebraska football dealing with big loss

Jeremiah Charles is now considered the guy who will step up and do the job. The good news here is that this isn’t his first rodeo.

Over the course of his season, Charles has appeared in six games. He hasn’t gotten a ton of action, seeing just 81 snaps. But at least he’s not totally green.

It’s hardly anything resembling good news, especially since there has to be some real concerns over whether Hill will be able to play again this year in any meaningful way. He did appear in the Ohio State game, though he was very obviously in discomfort and was taken out fairly early.

It will certainly be interesting to see what Tony White has up his sleeve with two starting defensive backs now out of commission.