Opponents are testing the mettle of Huskers’ DBs besides Cam Taylor-Britt. How are they holding up? | Football

That means the ball is coming Newsome’s way a lot, both in the passing game and on the ground.

“In the Power Five and in the Big Ten, any time you’ve got a new guy, they’re going to test him,” Chinander said. “He’s got to show that he can hold up and make the plays in the run game, and then they try to go after someone else. That’s kind of the way football works. I think he’s improving every week in that aspect. In practice, it’s one thing when it’s kind of ‘thud’ and all those types of things, then you get live bullets flying at you and it’s a different deal.

“He got his first taste of real, true starter action against a Big Ten football team, so I think he’s going to continue to get better and better in the run game, but that’s an area that he has to work on because, we all know in this league, they’re going to find a formation, they’re going to find a way to make a secondary player make the tackle.”

After the top two, the next pair into the game were Clark and, perhaps surprisingly, true freshman Marques Buford.

Buford missed most of the spring with an injury but has worked his way up into a co-No. 2 job with Tyreke Johnson on the depth chart. He’s been a special teams regular for the first two games as well, and got onto the field next after the top three.

“He came back and he didn’t dip his toe in the water, he dived right in,” Chinander said of Buford. “He made mistakes, he corrected mistakes, he played fast, he knows what he’s doing. He’s prepared. Then kind of the separating factor is he earned the right to be on the core four special teams. Any time a guy does that, we have to get him ready to play in the football game, because he’s on the bus.