Nebraska Football: Adrian Martinez needs to be on short leash in 2021

Not many players in college football have had a career quite like Adrian Martinez’s — and that’s not really a good thing.

Committing to Nebraska football in 2018 as a top-150 prospect, the hopes for Martinez were extremely high. He was expected to be Scott Frost’s first elite quarterback and take the program to those glory days.

Fast forward three years and the Cornhuskers are just 12-20 and Martinez has 31 passing touchdowns to 20 interceptions. He hasn’t been all that safe with the ball and he has just 14 touchdowns to 12 interceptions over his past two seasons. He had a breakout freshman campaign but has only regressed since.

Sure, Martinez did have a career-best 71 percent completion rate in 2020, but his yards per attempt were a career-low and he had just four touchdown passes in seven games.

Martinez is an elite runner with 1,776 yards and 22 touchdowns over his career including over 500 yards and a 5.7 yards per carry average in 2020 which was a career-high. But being a great runner only saves you so much at quarterback, especially in a critical year for the program.

If Martinez doesn’t improve as a passer in 2020, Frost could soon be out of a job.

Nebraska football shouldn’t be afraid to have Martinez on short leash

Martinez has been benched before, but there was never truly fear on his end of not getting the benefit of the doubt from his head coach. That’s probably what led Luke McCaffrey to transfer out despite having a promising future under center.

But just because there’s no real experience behind Martinez shouldn’t mean Frost lets him do whatever he wants this season with no consequences.

If he struggles, he needs to be shown the bench.

It wouldn’t be bad to use him in some other capacity on offense if he’s not getting it done with his arm and make room for redshirt freshman and former four-star dual-threat Logan Smothers. If he’s not getting it done, someone else deserves a shot.

Frost’s job depends on it and time is running out.