Nebraska football: 3-way quarterback race shouldn’t be concern, yet
Some Nebraska football fans might be a bit worried about a walk-on quarterback holding his own with two touted scholarship players.
On Thursday, the Nebraska football coaching staff talked about the three-way quarterback race unfolding in fall camp. On Friday morning, more than a few Husker fans might have been a bit worried about Andrew Bunch being in the fold.
When you’re talking about two quarterbacks who came to Lincoln with fanfare, it can be disconcerting to see the walkon having a real shot at the starting job.
If there was one big complaint about the Bo Pelini era, it was that there were usually a few too many walk-ons winning jobs over scholarship players. Certainly, there are situations where the walk-on was just not evaluated as well as he should have been.
Other times the scholarship players getting beat out seemed to be all about the “want to.” While it’s incredibly unlikely that either Adrian Martinez or Tristan Gebbia are suffering from a lack of “want to” it can feel odd to see them struggling to separate themselves form Andrew Bunch.
Nebraska Cornhuskers
The “good” news at this point is the lack of separation is likely based on factors other than who is really the better quarterback.
The main factor in the three-man race is likely equal levels of familiarity with the offense they are running. None of the three quarterbacks really have a leg up when it comes to knowing how Scott Frost‘s offense works.
The trio started off on the same foot and after a long layoff from practices over the summer, all three are starting “fresh” once again. It’s also entirely possible the coaches are making the offense simple enough at the beginning that there aren’t many opportunities to get real separation from the pack.
The more obvious answer right now is that Scott Frost and company are keeping the frontrunner under their hats. It makes more sense to keep just who is the leader secret in order to engender better competition.
Even when you’re talking about Andrew Bunch, you want the walk-on who will almost assuredly be third-string by the Akron game, to play as hard and as well as he possibly can. The same is especially true when talking about Gebbia and Martinez.
This early in fall camp isn’t time to start worrying about the starting quarterback job for the Nebraska football team. If this is a real competition, there shouldn’t be a front runner yet.
5 biggest questions heading into camp. dark. Next
The time to worry would be if it’s August 24th and it’s still a three-man race.