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NEBRASKA FOOTBALL: The T-Plot Thickens
Commentary: Martinez story still unfolding in ways we won't predict until it happens
By Samuel McKewon
September 14, 2010
College football coaches are a particular bunch. Magicians, almost. Literally here. Tell the trick when you sell the trick.
In one breath Shawn Watson will reduce his 80-hour work week into “basic math.” In the next he will speak - as most coaches apparently must - as if there’s a burning bush somewhere one must behold before he can crack open a playbook and decipher the pigskilyphics. You hear that word: Nomenclature. Etymology of the triple option. Onomastics of the Y stick. It’s a Michael Mann movie that spends half of its running time in fuzzy visual focus while the soundtrack buzzes with lines of dialogue Hemingway wouldn’t even use, but sound authentic.
Carl Pelini Tuesday. Posed with a quote from Washington coach Steve Sarkisian, who praised the rare “two-gap scheme” Nebraska’s defensive line employed, the heady Pelini brother stared ahead, paused - he’s can be a little professorial - and said: “First, we don’t play a two-gap scheme. We play a one-gap scheme with a two-gap mentality.”
Well then.
And you have to love it a little, these little lessons in football epistemology. Those laminated placards coaches stuff in their pants on gameday, packed with data, percentages and nomenclature, resemble a debate judge’s flow sheet. In high school, hopped up on caffeine and candy, we sit in awe of this one particular judge, some guy out of Grand Island, who, slumped in his chair, could map out all of the arguments of a policy debate round on a single page. We’d peek out from behind our tubs of evidence to see this frantic, dramatic scribbling with an organization only this mop-headed stoner could decipher.
Hellacious, we said, twirling our pens. It was a compliment. A little nutty - but resplendent in that daffydom.
College football coaches. Hellacious. Good living, too.
But there isn’t much new under the sun. Like classic fiction, the game recycles a few fundamental principles through the postmodern funnel of redefining form, rather than inventing function.
The triple option is still the triple option - only out of the shotgun. The West Coast passing game has been broken down into a thousand little routes and put back together as something slightly different for each coach. Statistics are everywhere on the Internet. Sites like Smart Football provide a simple, enjoyable crash course in Football 101. And, for a small fee, Husker coaches put fans through Football 202 each summer. Tell the trick when you sell the trick. Fans want to know these little factoids more than ever. We love the trees. Damn the forest.
Which is why, I suspect, Taylor Martinez is such an interesting case. He’s that one tree in the forest you haven’t seen. I don’t mean his skills, per se - they exist, in some form, in lots of players - but his sheer lack of an easily-told story. In the midst of this information age, flush with details on just about everyone and everything, here is an enigma. And not just because Martinez is media shy. Martinez is one of those curious sorts walking the earth, getting in adventures. What we know - or what those in the Internet Illuminati insist they know - is overwhelmed by what we don’t.
“Talented kid,” Sarkisian said Monday. “Great athlete. It was somewhat of a steal for Nebraska because I think so many people viewed him as just an athlete and people were recruiting him as a safety or a different position and not just at quarterback.”
Sarkisian said he looked at Martinez “hard” in 2008. This was still as an USC assistant. He looked at him again as Washington’s head coach a few months later. Which position? Sark didn’t exactly say. Perhaps Sark didn’t exactly know.
Another anecdote: Washington sophomore safety Nathan Fellner faced Martinez during his senior season at high school in Fresno. Guess what took Fellner by surprise this week when the Huskies watched film of Martinez?
“How fast he was,” Fellner said. “He can really run.”
That’s because Martinez carried the ball two times for seven yards in that win over Fellner’s Fresno team. He threw for 300 yards - on 14 completions.
“I didn’t really run that much in high school,” Martinez said. And yet he runs the zone read Suzuki style, off the cuff, a prodigy riffing on a Stradivarius.
Said Watson: “He doesn’t see little plays. He sees big plays.” And yet he hasn’t thrown a bomb to one of the nation’s best deep threats, Niles Paul, one time in two games.
“We didn’t really want to show our hand,” head coach Bo Pelini. And yet Bo has put down his ace already in Martinez, Nebraska’s most explosive offensive player since Eric Crouch.
See, this story is unfolding in real time with a pretty extraordinary paradox at its core: Pelini, a perfectionist if there ever was one, handing the keys of his top ten, senior-laden team to a wild card, a natural introvert from the Inland Empire.
In two games Martinez has shattered a couple quarterback rushing records. He’s averaging 13.5 yards per carry. He runs with a curious abandon, his arms flailing, wrists flapping, as if he’s running through a sprinkler. He walks into Saturday’s game at Washington - and its perfectly daunting setting on Montlake - citing big high school games as his experience with crowds.
“That’s just the stuff he would say,” said wide receiver Brandon Kinnie.
Paul won’t bother giving the redshirt freshman advice on handling crowd noise.
“If you tell him, he probably wouldn’t listen to you anyway,” Paul said. “He’s going to handle it his own way. I’m telling you: He has no emotion out there. No emotion.”
And Paul doesn’t say this disdainfully, but with a shrug and a smile. Martinez isn’t exactly Salinger or Pynchon, but the kid is inscrutable. His brief conversations with the media teeter on irony. He appears oblivious to his accomplishments or his place at the Husker table.
Some quarterbacks are weighed down by their various responsibilities. Locker room leader. Spokesman. Legacy-builder. Community hub. Think Jake Locker. Or Colt McCoy. Or, yes, Tim Tebow. Martinez seems unburdened, disinterested in being the face of the program. He’s a sniper, the guy in the tower, the best shot in the unit, who keeps to himself and inspires mysteries, speculation and intrigue. A sniper isn’t a general, and he certainly isn’t a grunt. He’s a specialist. A different cat. Just him and his gun. Or, in this case, a football.
“He’s always competing,” Watson said. “I’ve grown to expect that from him every day. He never has a bad day. He’s a got a competitive gift, is what I call it. Not really cocky. Quiet. And confident.”
I’d venture a guess as to how Martinez will perform Saturday, but we don’t know all, or even many, of Martinez’s tricks yet. And T-Magic certainly isn’t selling them. .
NEBRASKA FOOTBALL: The T-Plot Thickens
Commentary: Martinez story still unfolding in ways we won't predict until it happens
By Samuel McKewon
September 14, 2010
College football coaches are a particular bunch. Magicians, almost. Literally here. Tell the trick when you sell the trick.
In one breath Shawn Watson will reduce his 80-hour work week into “basic math.” In the next he will speak - as most coaches apparently must - as if there’s a burning bush somewhere one must behold before he can crack open a playbook and decipher the pigskilyphics. You hear that word: Nomenclature. Etymology of the triple option. Onomastics of the Y stick. It’s a Michael Mann movie that spends half of its running time in fuzzy visual focus while the soundtrack buzzes with lines of dialogue Hemingway wouldn’t even use, but sound authentic.
Carl Pelini Tuesday. Posed with a quote from Washington coach Steve Sarkisian, who praised the rare “two-gap scheme” Nebraska’s defensive line employed, the heady Pelini brother stared ahead, paused - he’s can be a little professorial - and said: “First, we don’t play a two-gap scheme. We play a one-gap scheme with a two-gap mentality.”
Well then.
And you have to love it a little, these little lessons in football epistemology. Those laminated placards coaches stuff in their pants on gameday, packed with data, percentages and nomenclature, resemble a debate judge’s flow sheet. In high school, hopped up on caffeine and candy, we sit in awe of this one particular judge, some guy out of Grand Island, who, slumped in his chair, could map out all of the arguments of a policy debate round on a single page. We’d peek out from behind our tubs of evidence to see this frantic, dramatic scribbling with an organization only this mop-headed stoner could decipher.
Hellacious, we said, twirling our pens. It was a compliment. A little nutty - but resplendent in that daffydom.
College football coaches. Hellacious. Good living, too.
But there isn’t much new under the sun. Like classic fiction, the game recycles a few fundamental principles through the postmodern funnel of redefining form, rather than inventing function.
The triple option is still the triple option - only out of the shotgun. The West Coast passing game has been broken down into a thousand little routes and put back together as something slightly different for each coach. Statistics are everywhere on the Internet. Sites like Smart Football provide a simple, enjoyable crash course in Football 101. And, for a small fee, Husker coaches put fans through Football 202 each summer. Tell the trick when you sell the trick. Fans want to know these little factoids more than ever. We love the trees. Damn the forest.
Which is why, I suspect, Taylor Martinez is such an interesting case. He’s that one tree in the forest you haven’t seen. I don’t mean his skills, per se - they exist, in some form, in lots of players - but his sheer lack of an easily-told story. In the midst of this information age, flush with details on just about everyone and everything, here is an enigma. And not just because Martinez is media shy. Martinez is one of those curious sorts walking the earth, getting in adventures. What we know - or what those in the Internet Illuminati insist they know - is overwhelmed by what we don’t.
“Talented kid,” Sarkisian said Monday. “Great athlete. It was somewhat of a steal for Nebraska because I think so many people viewed him as just an athlete and people were recruiting him as a safety or a different position and not just at quarterback.”
Sarkisian said he looked at Martinez “hard” in 2008. This was still as an USC assistant. He looked at him again as Washington’s head coach a few months later. Which position? Sark didn’t exactly say. Perhaps Sark didn’t exactly know.
Another anecdote: Washington sophomore safety Nathan Fellner faced Martinez during his senior season at high school in Fresno. Guess what took Fellner by surprise this week when the Huskies watched film of Martinez?
“How fast he was,” Fellner said. “He can really run.”
That’s because Martinez carried the ball two times for seven yards in that win over Fellner’s Fresno team. He threw for 300 yards - on 14 completions.
“I didn’t really run that much in high school,” Martinez said. And yet he runs the zone read Suzuki style, off the cuff, a prodigy riffing on a Stradivarius.
Said Watson: “He doesn’t see little plays. He sees big plays.” And yet he hasn’t thrown a bomb to one of the nation’s best deep threats, Niles Paul, one time in two games.
“We didn’t really want to show our hand,” head coach Bo Pelini. And yet Bo has put down his ace already in Martinez, Nebraska’s most explosive offensive player since Eric Crouch.
See, this story is unfolding in real time with a pretty extraordinary paradox at its core: Pelini, a perfectionist if there ever was one, handing the keys of his top ten, senior-laden team to a wild card, a natural introvert from the Inland Empire.
In two games Martinez has shattered a couple quarterback rushing records. He’s averaging 13.5 yards per carry. He runs with a curious abandon, his arms flailing, wrists flapping, as if he’s running through a sprinkler. He walks into Saturday’s game at Washington - and its perfectly daunting setting on Montlake - citing big high school games as his experience with crowds.
“That’s just the stuff he would say,” said wide receiver Brandon Kinnie.
Paul won’t bother giving the redshirt freshman advice on handling crowd noise.
“If you tell him, he probably wouldn’t listen to you anyway,” Paul said. “He’s going to handle it his own way. I’m telling you: He has no emotion out there. No emotion.”
And Paul doesn’t say this disdainfully, but with a shrug and a smile. Martinez isn’t exactly Salinger or Pynchon, but the kid is inscrutable. His brief conversations with the media teeter on irony. He appears oblivious to his accomplishments or his place at the Husker table.
Some quarterbacks are weighed down by their various responsibilities. Locker room leader. Spokesman. Legacy-builder. Community hub. Think Jake Locker. Or Colt McCoy. Or, yes, Tim Tebow. Martinez seems unburdened, disinterested in being the face of the program. He’s a sniper, the guy in the tower, the best shot in the unit, who keeps to himself and inspires mysteries, speculation and intrigue. A sniper isn’t a general, and he certainly isn’t a grunt. He’s a specialist. A different cat. Just him and his gun. Or, in this case, a football.
“He’s always competing,” Watson said. “I’ve grown to expect that from him every day. He never has a bad day. He’s a got a competitive gift, is what I call it. Not really cocky. Quiet. And confident.”
I’d venture a guess as to how Martinez will perform Saturday, but we don’t know all, or even many, of Martinez’s tricks yet. And T-Magic certainly isn’t selling them. .
