While the Nebraska football team didn’t play on Saturday, one of its former stars did. And he had himself one heck of a game. Adrian Martinez squared off against the Oklahoma Sooners for the second year in a row. However this time, he did it with the Kansas State Wildcats. It’s hard to imagine many people saw the kind of performance he put up, coming.
Martinez led the Wildcats to a 41-34 win over #6 Oklahoma thanks to completing 21 of 34 passes for 234 yards and a touchdown. He did not throw an interception. More impressively, he carried the ball 21 times for 148 yards and four touchdowns. The performance came one week after the former Nebraska football star was called out by Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman basically called him out for playing timid.
While Martinez isn’t a part of the Nebraska football team anymore, there’s an old adage that often brought up about the program. “Once a Husker, always a Husker.”
While that hasn’t always been applied uniformly, the reaction on social media Saturday night and Sunday morning showed that Adrian Martinez still has a special place in a lot of Cornhusker fans’ hearts.
https://twitter.com/247Sports/status/1573868951825678336
Right at the top of the list of Nebraska football fans takes was that Adrian Martinez wasn’t the problem. It turns out he carried the Huskers for four years, it just didn’t show right away.
Adrian Martinez single handedly kept the program afloat these past 4 seasons apparently. Hope he can pull this off against OU tonight!
— Big Red Fan (@BigRedFan9) September 25, 2022
Other fans saw what they called “vintage” Adrian Martinez in several of his drives against Oklahoma. He did have some games like this for Nebraska, even if he also had some truly frustrating games as well.
Incredible opening drive with vintage Adrian Martinez
— Jim in MN (@HuskersMN) September 25, 2022
Others saw the former Nebraska football star finally getting a signature win.
Adrian Martinez takes a knee in Norman and screams to the sky. After coming so close so many times, he has his signature win.
— Evan Bland (@EvanBlandOWH) September 25, 2022
More than a few Cornhuskers fans (and former players) had very mixed emotions watching the Wildcats take down the Sooners.
Watching Adrian Martinez lead 2 beautiful scoring drives in Norman makes me happy yet sad all at the same time. pic.twitter.com/IEqwJ1EThj
— Jeremiah Sirles (@Sirles71_HSKR) September 25, 2022
Fine, I'll say it:
— HuskGuys (@HuskGuys) September 25, 2022
If Adrian Martinez plays clutch in the 4th quarter and leads a game winning drive I will be very happy for him because he's a great kid but also extremely frustrated because he didn't do it once in 4 years at Nebraska
Was gonna say that Adrian Martinez beating Oklahoma is one more twist of the knife for Nebraska, but every Nebraska person I've seen tweet about him is living vicariously through him and so happy he's having fun and beating Oklahoma. He may be the No. 1 source of Nebraska joy atm
— Alex Kirshner (@alex_kirshner) September 25, 2022
Things didn’t work out for Adrian Martinez with the Nebraska football team like anyone had hoped they would, but for one night at least, Husker fans got to cheer him on and watch him get a very big win.