Tanner Lee draft choice exposes schism between Nebraska football fans

Oliver VanDervoort

(Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images)

While Nebraska football fans normally celebrate ever former Huskers who get drafted, the reaction to Tanner Lee has been quite a bit different.

Nebraska football fans like to repeat, from time to time, the motto “once a Husker, always a Husker.” It’s a good motto to have.

For the most part, Cornhusker fans stick to that motto. Once you have played for Nebraska, a majority of the fans will follow your career and will cheer for you the same way they would a member of their own family. It’s what makes the Cornhusker tradition as strong and impressive as it is.

On occasion though, it seems as if there is a player who comes through every now and then who doesn’t get the “once a Husker, always a Husker” treatment. Randy Gregory would probably argue that the fanbase has largely deserted him.

Reactions to stories about him trying to make a comeback tend to contain comments about how “dumb” he is for having the drug abuse issues he’s had. This isn’t all fans mind you, but the population as a whole certainly hasn’t circled their wagons around Gregory like they did for a time with Richie Incognito.

The case can be made that Husker fans have largely turned their back on Gregory because he couldn’t stay away from weed, when it sure seemed like all he had to do, in order to be a top of the line defensive player in the NFL was put the bong down every now and then.

Things are very different for Tanner Lee, yet the animus towards him is quite similar. There isn’t a story about Tanner Lee I’ve written that didn’t have more than a few comments talking about how bad a quarterback he is.

That too is somewhat normal for Cornhusker fans in the moment. They’re angry their team couldn’t win -really at all- with Lee at the helm. But what struck me in the weeks leading up to the draft and now that he’s been drafted are the number of fans who seem to be angry that one of their own is going to get a shot at the NFL.

Before you get too excited about Tanner Lee being drafted, remember he got drafted by a team who thinks Black Bortles is worth 54 million dollars.
— Adam Kelly (@adam_kellyy) April 29, 2018

This isn’t to say that the entire fanbase is angry. There are plenty who are sticking to the tried and true motto.

Still, the number of dyed in the wool would sooner miss the birth of their child than a Nebraska football game, fans seem like they wish Tanner Lee would disappear off the face of the earth is shocking to me.

Because I just don’t get it, I decided to look at the main reasons this schism between groups of Husker fans seems to have formed.

Of all the knocks against Tanner Lee from Nebraska football fans, this is the one that is both completely understandable, and based in very little fact.

Yes, Lee transferred from Tulane, where he played his first two years of college football. Guess who else was a recent transfer quarterback that Husker fans have no problem embracing? Zac Taylor.

Taylor played for Wake Forest before going to a Junior College and then coming to Nebraska. Now the quarterback coach for the Los Angeles Rams, Cornhusker fans are perfectly fine when someone says he’s “one of ours.”

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Obviously some of the “rental” perception is because Lee only played one season here. The thing is, those people are apparently forgetting he sat out a year once he arrived in Lincoln.

Considering he played quarterback as a true freshman at Tulane, he spent exactly as many years in Lincoln as he did in Louisiana.

Had Scott Frost not installed an offense Tanner wasn’t suited for, he’d have spent more time here than his first school. Despite that, I bet even if he had played his senior year, he’d still be perceived as a rental.

Tanner Lee is not really a Husker though he’s really still a Tulane guy who was rented by Nebraska
— moose64 (@cfbtrackers) April 29, 2018

People are so against the idea that the quarterback was truly a member of the Nebraska football team, that they’re willing to argue against a pretty important draft streak being kept alive thanks to Tanner Lee.

When the Nebraska football team goes 4-8, it’s pretty easy to blame the quarterback. It’s even easier when the quarterback throws 16 interceptions.

Here’s the thing, Tanner Lee rarely gets credit for playing on a bad team. Instead quite a few too many Cornhusker fans tend to claim they were bad because of Lee.

Yes, his turnovers were bad. Yes his completion percentage wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t as bad as you’d think when listening to fans critique his performances.

Take a look at his immediate predecessor. Tommy Armstrong was certainly a different kind of player, which gets him a pass from the same people who claim Lee just wasn’t good.

Still, Armstrong’s best completion percentage at Nebraska for a season was 55.2 percent. That same season he threw … 16 interceptions. Yet when Armstrong earned himself a tryout as an UDFA with the Minnesota Vikings, fans were almost (rightfully) uniformly happy for him.

Tanner Lee completed 57.5 percent of his passes this season. He also threw for 23 touchdowns. There is also this:

Weird stat given all of Tanner Lee's inconsistnecies, but in last year's games vs. Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Purdue, Minnesota, and Penn State, Lee's stats were:

127/203 (62.5%), 1,815 yards, 12 TD, 1 INT
— Кevin (@KevinFromDuval) April 30, 2018

Tanner Lee might have been inconsistent as a starting quarterback for the Nebraska football team, but he wasn’t bad. The supporting cast, including a porous offensive line, no running game and a defense that leaked like a sieve don’t seem to share enough blame for that 4-8 season.

If you’ve read this far, you’re still probably coming down on one of two sides. Either you buy 100 percent into the idea that once a player for the Nebraska football team laces it up for the Huskers, they will always be a Husker, or you don’t.

Tanner Lee isn’t even the only Cornhuskers’ quarterback to get this kind of treatment. Anyone who remembers the Bill Callahan era remembers the fiasco that was Sam Keller.

Keller arrived in Lincoln much the same way Lee did. He was billed as the guy who was going to save the program.