Nebraska football: Don’t sleep on Adrian Martinez having a career year

Nebraska football quarterback Adrian Martinez needs a big year.

Year 3 back at Nebraska is a big one for Scott Frost and an even bigger one for quarterback Adrian Martinez.

The hype hasn’t been met so far but Martinez is the best offensive player on Nebraska and Frost needs him to have his best season now.

He showed signs of promise as a freshman in 2018 with 2,617 passing yards, 17 touchdowns and only eight interceptions, but Martinez succumbed to the sophomore slump in 2019.

Martinez completed less than 60 percent of his passes, didn’t throw for 2,000 yards and had only one more touchdown than interceptions.

For Nebraska to get over the hump, the Cornhuskers’ former star quarterback and their current star quarterback need to demonstrate they can lead this proud program back to prominence. We saw Frost win big at UCF, but can we count on Martinez to hold up his end of the bargain during his junior season?

Can Adrian Martinez overcome his sophomore slump?

At 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds, the Fresno, California native has the dual-threat playmaking ability that all great Nebraska quarterbacks have had before him. He’s shown he can throw for well over 2,500 yards before and approach 30 combined touchdowns in a season before. But he’s also had moments where it wasn’t a certainty he’ll keep Luke McCaffrey as his backup. But if he needs a jolt of confidence, Nebraska football schedule opens up incredibly softly for the Cornhuskers.

Assuming they can hold their own against Luke Fickell’s Cincinnati Bearcats at home on Sept. 26, there is a very clear pathway for Nebraska football to begin the season on a commendable 7-0 run. The Cornhuskers face Central Michigan and South Dakota State in the non-conference, as well as four Big Ten bottom feeders in Purdue, Northwestern, Illinois and Rutgers.

Then…it gets so, so much harder for them.

After presumably beating the Scarlet Knights at their SHI Stadium in Piscataway to get to 7-0, Nebraska probably won’t be favored in any of its final five games. They are as follows: At Ohio State, home vs. Penn State, at Iowa, at Wisconsin and home vs. Minnesota. Iowa may not be a great team, but winning at Kinnick is always hard. Is Minnesota the easiest game of the five?

Though the back-half of Nebraska’s schedule is about as brutal as they come, a confident Martinez, who has presumably gotten the Cornhuskers back to bowl eligibility before Halloween, may very well have tapped into all the promise he had coming out of high school. If Martinez is playing well, that should give Nebraska football all the confidence in the world to face anyone.

So what would a bounce-back season look like for the junior signal-caller? Let’s say Martinez throws for over 3,000 yards, rushes for another 800 or so, accounts for 30 total touchdowns and has Nebraska playing in a holiday season bowl for the first time in years. These are not unrealistic expectations. This is what he came to Lincoln to do, to get the Nebraska program back on track.

Overall, Nebraska has the talent to go 7-5, maybe even 8-4 if all goes according to plan. While the Cornhuskers won’t challenge Minnesota or Wisconsin for divisional supremacy just yet, they will be firmly in that next tier, chomping at the bit to do it in 2021. Frost should have his team playing in a bowl game with Martinez as the star quarterback to get the Cornhuskers there.

So if you count out Martinez this fall, that’s on you.

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