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Former Nebraska football defender finds Husker friendly new home

By Oliver Vandervoort

MIAMI GARDENS, FLORIDA - AUGUST 11: Garrett Nelson #56 of the Miami Dolphins looks on prior to playing the Atlanta Falcons in a preseason game at Hard Rock Stadium on August 11, 2023 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
MIAMI GARDENS, FLORIDA - AUGUST 11: Garrett Nelson #56 of the Miami Dolphins looks on prior to playing the Atlanta Falcons in a preseason game at Hard Rock Stadium on August 11, 2023 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images) /
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A former Nebraska football star didn’t make the cut with the NFL team that signed him after the draft managed to land with a very Huskers-friendly squad.

Garrett Nelson’s NFL dream isn’t over just yet. The former Nebraska football defensive lineman will get to try and keep it going from an NFL team’s practice squad.

In signing with the Cincinnati Bengals, he lands on a team that seems to spend every offseason making sure it has at least a few Huskers stockpiled somewhere on its roster.

The Bengals announced earlier this week that Nelson signed a deal to join their practice squad. It’s obviously not what the defender had been hoping for when he left the Nebraska football program a year earlier than he had to, but it’s a definite step in the right direction.

Nelson becomes the third former Nebraska football player to be on the active roster or practice squad. He joins former Blackshirt teammate Cam Taylor-Britt who missed the first half of the 2022 season but managed to explode on the scene when he came back from an injury.

Nelson is also joined by wide receiver Stanley Morgan Jr who is entering his fifth season with the Bengals franchise. The former Nebraska football wide receiver has mostly spent time on special teams with the NFL team and is starting the 2023 season with the practice squad.

Former Nebraska football star lands on Bengals

It helps that Nelson’s new head coach is also a former Husker. Zac Taylor’s career in Lincoln has been overshadowed a bit by the fact that it was during a period of time when the Huskers’ brand started getting tarnished.

Still, he was one of the best quarterbacks to take a snap in the post-Frank Solich era and he’s forging a career that could see him finish as the best coach in Cincy franchise history if he can keep things rolling.

Finally, there is of course one player on the Bengals who was never a member of the Nebraska football team but has deep Husker ties and was famously rebuffed by Scott Frost. That player of course is the newly-minted highest-paid player in NFL history, Joe Burrow.

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