Spring preview: Offensive line has a few questions to answer this spring
The Nebraska football team is scheduled to officially start spring practice on Tuesday, Mar. 30, as the Big Red will go five straight weeks before wrapping things up with the May 1 Red-White spring game.
As we get closer to the start of spring practice, it's time to take an in-depth look at each position group.
Today we take we breakdown the offensive line, as NU returns six players this spring who have started Division I games over their career.
What we know now: Six players on this line have made D-I starts
Nebraska loses veterans like Brenden Jaimes, Matt Farniok and Boe Wilson this spring, but you can argue they return as deep and promising of a group of linemen in a number of years.
In all, the Huskers have six players returning in 2021 that have made Division I FBS starts - Cameron Jurgens (19), Trent Hixson (12), Bryce Benhart (8), Ethan Piper (7), Turner Corcoran (1) and Nouredin Nouili (7 - Colorado State).
Position coach Greg Austin and Scott Frost have had a development plan with this group, and it appears 2021 we will really start to see the fruits of their labor.
Jurgens, Benhart, Piper and Corcoran appear to locks as starters. On paper, the combination of Benhart and Corcoran is as highly-rated of a pair of tackles NU has ever had on the field in the Rivals.com rankings era.
Behind them, you have other veteran likes Broc Bando and Matt Sichterman, to go along with promising up-and-coming young linemen like Brant Banks, Henry Lutovsky and Teddy Prochazka.
The biggest challenge now for Austin is finding the best five and working different combinations this spring.
Biggest questions to answer: Who emerges at guard? Is Corcoran ready?
Today, we assume Piper will be locked into one starting guard spot, but there's still potentially a lot of competition there with veterans like Bando, Hixson, Sichterman and Nouili.
Then you have the possibility of moving somebody like Banks inside to guard. It will be interesting to see how Austin works that group of players this spring.
Then you have Corcoran, who delivered one of the best true freshman starts we have ever seen at Nebraska in NU's season finale at Rutgers.
Today we assume he'll be the guy, but don't count out Banks or even a newcomer like Prochazka. There will be some good competition this spring at tackle, but most expect Corcoran to emerge as the guy.
Spring dark horses: Brant Banks and Nouredin Nouili
The two darkhorse this spring on the offensive line are Banks and Nouili.
Banks has a chance to either win the left tackle job or even move inside and win a starting guard position. It's clear this staff is high on his abilities and he will get more than a look this spring.
Nouili is the other wildcard. He started 7 games at Colorado State as a true freshman in just his second-ever year of playing American football. Nouili moved to Nebraska from Germany for his junior year of high school and graduated a year early to enroll at CSU.
He's as big and athletic as any of Nebraska's guards. The question I have is how well he moves after putting around 40 pounds of weight on the last couple of years.