Thursday night’s matchup between No. 4 Ohio State and Minnesota will be a clash of two teams starting 2021 coming off entirely different seasons in 2020. However, the Buckeyes and Gophers both have extremely high hopes entering the 2021 college football season, especially considering they will be the second Big Ten game of the year and a featured attraction on national TV. Follow live updates from Ohio State at Minnesota.
Ohio State entered 2020 with high expectations and lived up to them. The Buckeyes went 5-0 against a truncated Big Ten schedule and won the conference. They then disposed of Clemson in the College Football Playoff before falling to Alabama in the national championship game. Minnesota had significant expectations of its own. The Golden Gophers had finished the 2019 season as one of the bigger surprises in the country. They finished 11-2 and capped off the season with a win over Auburn in the Outback Bowl. Unfortunately for the Gophers, COVID-19 and injuries wrought havoc on the team in 2020, and they limped to the finish line at 3-4.
This season, despite the loss of key players, Ohio State is once again expected to win the Big Ten and compete for a playoff berth. On the other hand, nobody’s quite sure what to expect from Minnesota this season. Perhaps Thursday night’s opener will give us a clearer picture.
C.J. Stroud steps in: Ohio State’s quarterback battle was one of the most closely-watched in the country this offseason as the Buckeyes looked for the replacement for Justin Fields. They hope to have found him in Stroud, who will make his first career start Thursday night. Stroud was the No. 2 pro-style QB in the 2020 recruiting class, per the 247Sports Composite, and the California native comes with high expectations. Stroud had to beat out other highly-rated recruits for the job. His competition included Kyle McCord (five-star, 2021), Jack Miller (four-star, 2020) and Quinn Ewers (five-star, 2021), the latter of whom reclassified to join the Buckeyes this season.
