Nebraska Football: The Adrian Martinez experiment needs to end

Time to give up on Adrian Martinez

It pains me to say this: Nebraska football has to move on from Adrian Martinez as the starting quarterback.

Maybe not this season, because the options behind him aren’t great. But he just can’t get the job done. It’s so painfully obvious at this point.

Martinez has talent and at times, he looks like an All-Big Ten quarterback. But as good as he looked last week, he was that bad against Minnesota, and in his fourth year as a starter, there are just no excuses at this point. He completed 18 of 33 passes for 241 yards and a touchdown, but a bunch of those yards game on the last drive, and by then it was too late.

The safety he took was a rookie mistake and I lost count of all the batted passes. But he is what he is. And what he shouldn’t be is the Nebraska starting quarterback next season.

If Scott Frost is back, which is a big if, he needs to mine the transfer portal for a quarterback, and the fact that he didn’t the last offseason is looking like a huge mistake. He tied himself to Martinez and that decision has paid off terribly.

Martinez and the Huskers offense had the ball three straight possessions in Minnesota territory down five and didn’t score a single point. And sure, Culp missing a bunny didn’t help but getting three points out of those three possessions isn’t much better.

In fact, it’s the reason, along with special teams, Nebraska lost the game. And the sign of a poor quarterback is one who can’t execute in the clutch or in the red zone.

Martinez is a great kid and it’s possible he rallies this team, finally does something amazing (like beating Iowa and Wisconsin, plus Purdue which is the path to a bowl game) but if not or even so, you’ve got to do whatever possible to find an upgrade.