Nebraska QB Taylor Martinez should take the rest of the season off
By Josh Davis
The Nebraska Cornhuskers lost to the Minnesota Golden Gophers on Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis in one of the most disappointing outcomes in program history for Nebraska. Lots of people will blame Bo Pelini for this loss, but is it his fault?
It was his decision to allow Taylor Martinez to start the football game, so perhaps it does fall on Pelini, but I’m putting this on Martinez. After all, it was him who said “today I thought the best interest of the team was for me to come back and go on the six-week stretch.” However he also said that he has been “pretty much living in that training room and trying to get my foot healthy, as healthy as possible, as much as I can tolerate it.”
Look, I know Martinez is a competitor, but yesterday proved that he’s not the best man for the job right now. It’s tough to fault a guy for giving it his all, but this was selfish. The coach has stated multiple times that the best interest of the team was a 100% healthy Martinez. Instead, the quarterback took it upon himself to try and determine the best interest of the team and it bit Nebraska.
In the past, maybe there wasn’t a better option at quarterback. I think we found out over the past couple weeks that Tommy Armstrong is a more than adequate replacement. The offense is actually better than I remember it in the past few seasons under Armstrong.
Pelini put his thoughts into perspective on his quarterback like this; “Let’s not go there and act like Taylor Martinez lost this football game for us. Our problems today were far beyond who our quarterback was. That was a team loss”.
Admittedly, Martinez’ foot injury isn’t “turf toe”, but an injury to his middle two toes. Clearly until that is healed Nebraska will struggle because they rely so heavily on him being able to run. He said that it could take 3 or 4 months to heal, so if he continues as the quarterback, Bo Pelini can kiss his job goodbye.