Nebraska football suffers first serious injury of fall camp

Since Nebraska football’s fall camp kicked off, the news has mostly been positive. That positive news even included the rather happy update that defensive back Blye Hill might be able to play in the Huskers’ season opener.

However, because this is football, when the hitting starts, guys will get banged up. There have been a few minor bumps and bruises so far, but on Saturday, the Cornhuskers suffered their first real significant injury of the camp.

Freshman linebacker Roger Gradney, who just happened to be the first commitment of the 2024 class went down on the turf during Saturday’s practice in front of a couple thousand paying fans. On Monday, he took to his Instagram account to announce his injury will keep him out for the entire season.

Nebraska football loses freshman to big injury

Gradney, didn’t post much, but he did include a picture of himself being carted off the field after he got hurt with the caption, “till next year promise I ain’t done.”

While the message was upbeat about the fact that he plans to come back and be even better in 2025, it’s still a massive setback for a linebacker, who came to the Cornhuskers as a defensive back from Texas.

It’s an especially sad setback for the young player considering he was already showing that he was overcoming odds a bit as he was a kind of “diamond in the rough” target for the Huskers back when he committed.

Nebraska football coaches liked his size and clearly saw that in college, it was more likely that Gradney was going to succeed on the college level at linebacker rather than as a defensive back. He’ll have to go back to proving Matt Rhule, Tony White and the rest of the crew next season when he comes back healthy.