Oke, a redshirt freshman, is spending his summer battling for playing time in a crowded cornerback room. Fussell was in Oke’s shoes a year ago — now he’s entering his redshirt sophomore season as Northwestern’s CB1.
Josh Fussell was raised in Ohio State territory. The Northwestern cornerback played high school football for Lakota West in Westchester, Ohio, a suburb a few miles outside of Cincinnati, and three of his Lakota teammates play for the Buckeyes. Not Fussell. He racked up his fair share of Power Four offers, but the Buckeyes never came knocking.
When his Northwestern Wildcats faced Ohio State at Wrigley Field last November, Fussell made sure head coach Ryan Day knew what he was missing.
Fellow starting cornerback Theran Johnson was out against the Buckeyes, so Fussell, who was making just his sixth career start, entered the friendly confines with a target on his head. Matched up with an eventual National Championship winning receiving core that included blue chippers Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate and 2025 first round pick Emeka Egbuka, the former three-star recruit amassed a career high seven tackles and one pass breakup against Smith on a first-quarter shot to the endzone.
“You see the Ohio State [wide receivers] all the time,” says Fussell. “Those dudes, all you see are just highlights, like over and over again. Coming into the game as a first time starter, it kind of gave me the confidence to know, ‘Okay, I can line up with the best and the best.’”
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Now preparing for his redshirt sophomore season of Wildcat football, Fussell projects to be the preeminent defensive back in a retooled secondary unit that includes a bevy of young talent looking to make a name for themselves — like the Ohio native did against the Buckeyes. Among that hungry group is redshirt freshman Timi Oke, a rabbit-fast former soccer player who fought his way into the Big Ten despite swapping his boots for football cleats at 18.
With Fussell as the projected CB1, this year’s cornerback room projects to be a good bit deeper than in 2024. The portal monster hit the Northwestern sky team hard after its 14-7 win over Utah in the 2023 Las Vegas Bowl as starting corners Rod Heard II and Garnett Hollis Jr. transferred to Notre Dame and West Virginia, respectively. When redshirt junior Ore Adeyi went down with an injury in late August, redshirt junior Theran Johnson was the only returner left with real playing time under his belt. The ‘Cats had finished 14th in the country and fifth in the Big Ten with just 182.9 passing yards allowed per game in 2023. In 2024, a more inexperienced secondary allowed 50 more yards per game with fewer interceptions to finish in the bottom half of the conference.
A year later, Fussell is joined by a group of returners that includes a healthy Ore Adeyi, Jacksonville State transfer Fred Davis II, Braden Turner, Robert Fitzgerald and Evan Smith. Adeyi is the lone name in that group without at least four games of starting experience to his name, but he played in all 13 contests for the ‘Cats in 2023. Add in young guns like Oke, and the Northwestern secondary is ready to make a leap.
“I feel like last year, we played pretty well given the fact there were a lot of new starters like me,” says Fussell. “We all have very high expectations to be able to hold it down back there and compete with the best of the best.”
Fussell started last summer as the fourth or fifth cornerback on Northwestern’s depth chart — at best — before Adeyi’s injury thrust him into an eleventh-hour battle for the starting role with fellow redshirt freshman Evan Smith. Smith got the nod for Northwestern’s opener against Miami (OH), but it quickly became hard to keep Fussell off the field. After splitting time with Smith for the first four games of the season, Fussell started the final eight, tallying pass breakups in four of those eight contests, including that game against Ohio State.
Oke is entering his own redshirt freshman season in a similar position to Fussell’s last July, buried in the depth chart and scrounging for playing time in whatever form it may come.
“I’m just looking forward to whatever role I have on the team this year, taking the most opportunities that I get,” says Oke.
As both he and Fussell know, Oke is always just one play away.
Timi Oke grew up playing soccer for the Whitgift School in south London, a developmental powerhouse that boasts Bayern Munich superstar Jamal Musiala as an alum. He played his last match of competitive soccer in July of 2022 and played his first snaps of American football a month later with the NFL Academy, a program designed by the league to provide opportunities in the sport to talented athletes outside of the United States.
The Academy accepts athletes from ages 16-19, so Oke, who joined at 18, had just a year to take advantage of its training. Per a video on his Instagram page set to a sample featured on Lil Wayne’s “It Will All Work Out,” he debuted in a game for the Academy in September of 2022, attended his first college camps in the United States by May of 2023 and received his first Division I offer in June from UConn. Oke committed to the ‘Cats on Nov. 28, completing a 17-month crash course in American football as the first NFL Academy product to sign on with a school in the Big Ten.
While his late start qualified him as a raw prospect even in a program designed for athletes with limited football experience, Oke stood out with an Academy-record 4.38 40-yard dash and a penchant for absorbing new information – two skills that he hopes will earn him playing time for Northwestern in 2025.
Oke isn’t shy in discussing his athleticism — in his words, he has “tons” — but he hangs his hat on the mental side of the game, his ability “to think fast and get things down quickly” that served him so well when learning the sport for the first time back in London.
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Former NFL cornerback Jason Bell coached Oke during his year at the Academy, and though Oke’s own football career is still in its infancy, he is eager to pay his experience forward for the next generation of college football hopefuls from the United Kingdom. Oke hosted the first edition in what he hopes to be a long line of “Timi Oke Skill Camps” last May. Though his Northwestern classes prevented him from running another camp this spring, he still held training sessions when he was home for a few weeks this June.
“[Growing the game in England] means the most to me, being able to go back to where I’m from, and do something like that for people just like me,” says Oke. “Being able to help guys take the next step into maybe going to the NFL Academy or to a high high school in America, just being a part of their journey is something that I love.”
All cornerbacks get burnt — that’s as much a constant of the game as pregame ankle tape and head coach David Braun telling the media that he’s excited to get back in the building after a game on the road.
Fussell knows this as well as anyone. Despite his strong showing against the Buckeyes, he did allow a touchdown at Wrigley Field to Carnell Tate, biting on a double move before quarterback Will Howard lofted a picture-perfect ball over his hopelessly outstretched arms. Howard, who was selected in the sixth round of the 2025 NFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers, would target Fussell again at the friendly confines in what proved to be a sort of baptism by fire for the young cornerback. He took two deep shots at Fussell in the fourth quarter, one intended for Tate and one for Emeka Egbuka. Fussell left both sitting meekly in the Wrigley grass.
“The main thing about me when I do make mistakes in game time is just learning from it, [thinking], ‘What did I do wrong?’” says Fussell. “Just knowing that it was, it was a ‘me’ mistake. It was always something I could have done better and not blame on something I can’t control.”
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Braun has made a point to throw his young cornerbacks into the fire throughout the offseason. Addressing the media after Northwestern’s open spring practice in April, the third-year head coach said that he and his staff were working to add more one-on-one action to training camp, especially as impending roster restrictions imposed by the House v. NCAA settlement would force him to make some tough decisions for the final few spots. (The settlement was reworked after Braun’s April media availability, so no cuts were made).
“We were really intentional about finding ways to not just say we compete, but to actually put guys in the arena where it’s like, ‘This is one-on-one competition, let’s go do it,’” said Braun. “This group has really embraced the competitive nature of the way that we’re doing things.
Attendees of that open spring practice were treated to mano a mano matchups between Northwestern’s wide receivers and cornerbacks. Practice all but came to a halt for those reps as the entire Wildcat roster gathered around the North end zone at Martin Stadium to watch Fussell, Oke and Co. do battle.
“There’s no better place to mess up than in practice,” says Oke of the added emphasis on competition in the offseason. “Being able to learn from mistakes and understand what I did wrong, I’m prepared for what it will be like in the game.”
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For Fussell, that humility on the football field bleeds into to his mentality off it.
Though he is readying for just his second year of playing time, Fussell says his coaches have encouraged him to step up as a leader on the Northwestern defense. He understands the weight of that responsibility.
“I think I could still do a better job, and I try to hold myself more accountable,” says Fussell of his newly minted veteran status. “I know that my team and my coaches expect more out of me.”
Fussell’s first year in the lineup went just about as well as anyone could project given his place in the depth chart last July — barring maybe his first career interception. He thought he had it against Iowa before a roughing the passer penalty saw the play called back. Takeaway number one feels like the bare minimum in year two.
Success for Oke is more intangible, likely measured in the abstracts of progress and development, the steps taken to unleash the potential that saw him go from high-level academy soccer in England to Big Ten football in just 17 months. Fussell and his eight starts as a redshirt freshman are as much a blueprint of excellence for the Northwestern defense as All-Big Ten linebacker Mac Uihlein, who featured primarily on special teams in his first season of playing time before breaking out as a redshirt junior two years later.
Both know that so much can change from now until Northwestern’s season opener against Tulane on Aug. 31. Oke is ready for any opportunity, however it may present itself. Fussell has his stage in front of him, but he — more than anyone — is aware that nothing is promised.
“After having a good year, it’s very easy to get complacent, and that’s the very last thing I want to do,” says Fussell. “So I just want to over achieve again.”