Just sayin. The coaches say they're pleased with him. The press has said he's been organizing workouts during the offseason. The players say he's been more comfortable and more vocal. Martinez says he's always been a leader, just not a rah-rah guy.
Walksalone from Huskerboard says that he's skeptical.
I'm gonna go with the other guys.
I really would buy too much into what our coaches say. Has Martinez always said he has been a leader and not a rah rah guy???? Until a few days ago, I never heard any statement like that. Once he said that, everybody started following their pro Martinez statements with it. Just because Martinez says he is a leader doesnt really mean he is a leader. Ask 100% of players on last years teams what they thought of Martinez you are gonna get 76 different answers. That offense had no leadership at all. Since we are using everything Martinez says nowadays as hard evidence. He said didnt speak to the media last year out of respect of Zac Lee.......... Really?!?!?!?!? Come on Zac Lee wouldnt have been a starter in 09 had Patrick Witt not left and Kody Spano not gotten hurt (again). Now we got a quarterback thats the greatest thing since Tommie Frazier around here (atleast according to some)and wouldnt talk to the media out of respect of a serviceable senior backup QB. To me, thats doesnt sit right. Its like he didnt want the responsiblity, granted I know he was a freshman.... but how would anyone not want that.
He needs alittle dare I say Tim Tebow in him.
1. I didn't say that Martinez had always said he was a leader but not a rah-rah guy. I said, "Martinez says he's always been a leader, just not a rah-rah guy."
2. Maybe other players thought he was a leader, maybe they didn't think so. I'm sure there was more than one opinion. However, Martinez has made it clear he doesn't care what other people think of him, and I'm sure that also means that he believed he was a leader, and was going to lead his own way, and he didn't care if the other players thought he was a leader or not.
You could at this point argue that he should care what everybody thinks of him if he's going to be a leader. But if you're going to be a leader, you have to be yourself first and foremost. If you believe in who you are and what you're doing, then you're going to tune out the people who come along and tell you to change. That's a good characteristic in my opinion. You can't be a leader if you simply conform to what everyone else wants you to be.
3. I don't believe that Martinez is a leader because he says it in the press, but I believe his leadership is improving right now based on the comments of the coaches, the media, and of his teammates. All I've taken from Martinez's comments is that he isn't a rah-rah guy, which everyone assumed anyways. His statement on the matter only confirmed it.
4. As far as last year goes, I don't recall a single player last year saying that Martinez wasn't a leader. I recall reading people on this board saying that he wasn't a leader, and I recall people on this board saying they talked to players who allegedly said they didn't like Martinez. That stuff I don't care about so much. What the coaches and players and media say, I pay more attention to. Do I trust everything they say? No, it's coach speak, it's politics. But they're still the guy in the room, and I'm going to trust them more than some random anonymous message board poster, at least most of the time.
Furthermore, as far as I'm concerned, the veterans are always primarily responsible for leading a team, and Martinez was a freshman last year. Sure he was thrown into the QB spot, but that doesn't mean that every senior on the team is simply going to follow orders from him. I don't care about the media interviews, but I do believe that Martinez carried himself differently being a freshman QB taking the spot of a senior QB. I also have no problem imagining an environment where many of the upper-classmen instinctively disliked and distrusted Martinez not only because of his introverted personality, but because he had taken the spot of one of their buddies. I've been in situations like that before, and it's virtually impossible to win everyone over. I don't know if that was the situation or not, but if it was, the immaturity of the upper classmen would be to blame, and not Martinez.
5. Saying that Martinez needs to be more like Tebow simply isn't fair. You're asking the kid to be someone he's not. He's not going to be the guy to put on a show in the press conference after the game or run around the field pumping his fist at the crowd. Zac Lee wasn't either. Neither is Cody Green. Ndamukong Suh wasn't either, but people didn't seem to have a problem with his leadership traits.
No one on our team is Tim Tebow (thank god, in my opinion). Tim Tebow isn't Nebraska football, it's not all happy and peppy and flashy. Nebraska's great leaders (Grant Wistrom, Peter Brothers, Frazier, Frost, etc) have been for the most part really edgy guys who play with a chip on their shoulder and a pissed-off attitude, and who get after it like animals on every stinkin' rep, practice or game. The 1995 team constantly got into fights or scuffles in practice because they were just getting after each other so much. Nebraska's great leaders have been guys that were nasty competitors, not guys you would cast in a Disney movie. You can disagree with me, but I take the leadership of Jared Tomich, the Peter Brothers, and Grant Wistrom every day over Tim Tebow. Those guys would've eaten Tebow for lunch.
Let Martinez be Martinez, give him time to grow into his role, and I think you'll be surprised. I could be wrong, but I'm constantly amazed at the negativity around Martinez given his potential. I don't know if fans have lost perspective and expectations are really that out of control, or if they just plain don't like him because of how he talks or something, but the criticism of a kid who had the best freshman season at QB in the history of the program started getting old about 5 months ago.
