Buckeyes Get a Bit of Good News Ahead of Must Win Matchup with Northwestern

The Ohio State Buckeyes have their hands full on Saturday afternoon against the Northwestern Wildcats in a game that they have to win. 

Thankfully for Ohio State, they will face the Wildcats' starting quarterback, Aidan Chiles. Chiles, the Michigan State transfer, was having an awesome season for Northwestern before the Oregon defeat.

In that game that ended up being one of the better and more competitive games of the season, Chiles both came up short and came down with a significant injury. The actual injury and its cause are undisclosed at this point, but it resulted in is him missing last week against Iowa and being out for the game against Ohio State.

This couldn't have come at a better time for the Buckeyes, who are yearning for a victory. While Ohio State has lost its last two contests in blowout fashion against USC and Oregon, they are still alive in the Playoff and in the Big Ten race.

While they are alive, they do not control their own destiny. They need a little bit of help from some of their rivals as they try to find their way back into the Payoff conversation.

The first thing that they need to do is win out. The conversation starts there because if they drop one more football game, it is good night for them and good night for their season. 

Had Chiles been available, the Wildcats would have presented a major challenge for Ohio State, specifically on the offensive side of the ball. If we thought it was bad that Jay Johnson and the Oregon Ducks found something going against the Buckeyes, then who knows what Chip Kelly is seeing.

Furthermore, Kelly and the Wildcats have reached deep into their bag of tricks and have left no stone unturned. They have run plays out of the Wing-T formation; they have run the academy triple option; they have gone spread; and they just continue to keep mixing things up.

Down to their backup Nicco Marchiol, they struggled last week against the No. 19 Iowa Hawkeyes in a game that was hardly a competition. 

It's a bummer for Northwestern who has battled to have one of their best seasons in a long time but that's unfortunately the situation that they find themselves in. For the Buckeyes, beggars can't be choosers, to some extent. 

They will take anything that they can get at this point, and if it means going against a backup, then so be it.

Just win the football game, that is the only task at hand.