Adrian Martinez has yet to play a full game for Nebraska.
The freshman quarterback was knocked out of the Cornhuskers’ opener against Colorado with a right knee injury, missed the next week against Troy because of it and then was removed at halftime against Michigan because, as the head coach put it afterward, “the game was over.â€
Martinez has 22 rushing attempts and has taken six sacks in the two games he’s played, so he’s taken a lot of hits. But Frost said this week that, if keeping the ball in the hands of his talented 6-foot-2, 220-pound signal-caller gives NU the best chance to win, he’s going to do just that.
“We don’t have the luxury of being overly protective with him,†Frost said Monday. “We have to call what we think is going to work in the game.â€
Martinez, for his money, is fine with it. The freshman ran for 117 yards and two scores against Colorado before being harassed constantly against the Wolverines last weekend. He said he had a bit of uncertainty about how his right knee would hold up in the Big House, but as he got going he felt fine physically.
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“Honestly, whatever Coach Frost feels is required for us to win, I am ready to do it,†Martinez said. “If he thinks it requires me to run the ball more, then I will do that. I don’t think it is, necessarily, that I need to run the ball for us to be successful. I think we have other capabilities within our offense that we don’t need to.
“But, if that is what it is going to take, then I’ll do it.â€
Watch Martinez absorb a hit or lower his pads in an attempt to gain extra yardage, and you’ll know he doesn’t mind the physical part of the game. But it’s also important for the Huskers to try to keep their signal-caller upright over the next nine games.
“I think Bunch has shown he can come in and do a good job,†Frost said. “We had to protect Marcus (Mariota) a little bit, just because he was so valuable to us at Oregon that we didn’t want to run him 20 times a game. McKenzie (Milton), as great a player as he was, isn’t a man of huge stature so we didn’t want to run him up the middle a bunch, but we found creative ways to do it.
“Adrian is a little different. Adrian weighs about as much as I did when I was playing here and I think in the future he’ll be durable enough that we can do about whatever we want to him. The situation we’re in we’ll be a little careful but we have to call whatever play we think is going to work.â€