Scott Frost had his Early Signing Day presser earlier today. He said quite a bit and not just about the incoming class.

One of the most interesting items is that our beloved quarterback Adrian Martinez has already had surgery. I’m going to include complete quotes from the AD release.

“We had a lot of guys that had minor surgeries to get things cleaned up. Had quite a few guys that were tough and playing through some things in the end of the year. So, there’s several guys including Adrian that had minor surgeries. Well, no surgery is minor. They had surgeries, and we’re expecting them all to be back for spring ball.”

Frost and other coaches are constantly asked about injuries. There are privacy issues around that subject, so coaches have to be careful about how they’re wording their response.

On how much more hurt was Adrian than maybe the media realized

“We don’t talk about that stuff. I’ll tell you that I think the kid is a trooper for battling through what he battled through this year. He’s not alone. Several other guys had gotten things out and fighting for the team. That’s football. I’ve had seven surgeries as a football player. You come back healthier and better when you get one. I think a lot of those guys’ play will improve when they’re 100% healthy.”

Adrian Martinez will be ready for spring ball. Cue your complaints about how he sucks and Luke McCaffrey and Logan Smothers, blah blah blah.

“Everybody that had surgery I think will be ready for spring ball.”

Oh, then there’s Maurice Washington:

On sophomore running back Maurice Washington

“We are actually going to meet with Maurice tomorrow and try to come to a little resolution on what is going to happen. I’ll have more for you after that.”

Thank God for that. What would Nebraska football be without drama?

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On Recruiting And Recruits

I don’t follow recruiting very closely. Having said that we will be looking for two more recruiting-based writers in the coming year. If interested, send me an email cornnation@gmail.com.

My feeling about this recruiting class.... WOW!

My feeling before today was that Scott Frost was doing terrible at recruiting and this class would be mediocre and doom doom doom doom.

There’s exciting stuff here. You guys have probably already discussed

Frost hailed Travis Fisher’s recruiting prowess:

“I have to tell you, every year there’s a superstar on our staff in recruiting. This year, he’s one of the top guys. He has a lot of relationships down in Florida from his time there, both in North Florida where he grew up and down south where he’s recruited for a long time. He knocked it out of the park this year and that’s really valuable for our football team to have a coach that can go out of state like that and bring in the type of talent that he brought in.”

Omar Manning

“Omar I’m excited about. All year we kind of wished we were a little more productive at our outside receiver spot. That’s one place where we thought we wanted a kind of guy that could come in and potentially help us right away. There wasn’t a better guy in the country, in my opinion, for what we were looking for than him. He looks different than anybody I’ve ever coached and has tape to match. I’m really excited to get him. He’s got a little work to do yet before he gets to campus, but I think he has a chance to change our offense.”

He’s tall, right? Big? Yeah. That guy. We needed a tall, big guy at receiver, just like the basketball team needs a really friggin’ big guy to get some rebounds inside.

The Wide Receivers

“That’s one position where we need to improve. Obviously, we have a couple of good pieces. JD Spielman has been a phenomenal player around here for a long time. We’re lucky to have him back another season. I’m excited to coach a guy who could be the all-time leading receiver in Nebraska history and have a piece of that as a coach. I’m really impressed with his toughness and what he’s done for his entire career at Nebraska.

Obviously Wan’Dale Robinson, everyone saw what he could do this year. It was a shame to have him hurt a bit at the end of the year, but we’re excited for what he can bring next year. I think we’ve got a lot of young receivers in the program that we’re excited to work with in spring. When you look at that position, just being honest, when we came in as a coaching staff we only had four receivers on scholarship. We usually carry 10 or 11. That was a position just by numbers that we had to rebuild. We feel good about this class and where it’s going to take us.

We talked about Omar [Manning], Marcus Fleming is another guy from Florida who [Defensive Backs Coach] Fish (Travis Fisher) did an incredible job of recruiting. He can really go. He played on one of the best teams in Florida and was one of their stars. They won a state championship. You talk about a kid who oozes his love for football. He just loves being out there, and I think if you asked him to play on a parking lot cement track, he’d go out and play football. He has a chance to help us and help us quick. We landed a bunch of guys in a bunch of different positions.

Will [William] Nixon is a kid from Texas. I love coaches’ kids, and his dad is a coach at Baylor. Baylor did an unbelievable job this year. Jeff [Nixon] is his dad. I think he’s already starting to learn our offense because of what Jeff knows about it. I think he’s a guy that could play multiple spots for us, inside receiver, outside receiver, running back, a bunch of different places. I think he’s going to pick it up fast. We’re excited about him. Getting Alante Brown, late, was big for us too. He’s kind of the same type of guy. I think he can carry that ball for us, play inside, play outside. He changes direction really well and has really good hands. But he’s also physical. I think we did a lot to upgrade that position.”

Is it safe to say that this position group got a whole bunch better today?

Quarterback Recruit Logan Smothers

“The best meal I might have ever had on a recruiting visit was at Logan’s house. His mother and grandmother made us some good southern food, some barbeque, some fried okra, some green beans.

So he was already one of my favorites, and that helped him climb the list really fast. We looked for quarterbacks that throw it well, that can run and have the right mentality. Logan is a guy who understands the game and had a good junior year, an unbelievable senior year. I said this a couple times already today, but he really impressed me with his toughness and what he did in the playoffs in Alabama. He’s a guy we had to hold some people off on late that were trying to get back in on him. He’s an early enrollee too and I expect him to come in and compete right away.”

I didn’t listen to the presser but I hope Frost was twanging when he talked about it. I have not had fried okra in a very long time. He doesn’t mention what BBQ he had, but I’ve already forgotten about Logan Smothers and I am starting to drool.

Smothers will come around in time. We have a good set of quarterbacks on the roster, given that Smothers makes it to Lincoln, gets on the team, etc. (I take nothing for granted.) Martinez, McCaffrey, Smothers. That’s a pretty good group, lots of POTENTIAL.

OMG linebackers

“I think getting Keyshawn Greene right out of Florida really helped solidify what we have there. We have Va [Eteva Mauga-Clements] from California. I thought we needed to add a little depth to the inside linebacker room. He’s really a run and hit guy that we’re excited about. I have no doubt that he’s going to help our football team. Keyshawn is an unusual athlete when you watch his tape. His ability to get close to the football and make plays is pretty special. That was a tough get. He got up to Lincoln last week and fell in love with it. He’s anxious to get back. Outside linebacker is definitely a position that we wanted to address.

We started this whole thing off with Blaise Gunnerson from Iowa. Huge compliment, but if I have a son, I do have a son, so someday I hope he’s as big as Blaise and that good of a kid. We’re excited about him. Niko Cooper is just a specimen of an outside linebacker that we think could play in a lot of different places for us and help out with pass rush. Jimari Butler is another kid that we got late from Alabama. He’s another kid that when you walk in the room with him, you can see the potential there. His tape is really good, and he shows a lot of ability to get after the quarterback. We felt that we needed to improve ourselves in that area and we like who we got.”

Reading this, I wonder if Frost has started these guys “son” already, and they’re calling him “dad” or whatever it is that you call father figures these days. I mean.... honestly, Frost needs to do more cheesy talking like this... ala “Southern cooking, I hope my future son is as big and nice as this guy”. It’s great stuff.

Then There’s That Offensive Lineman Turner Corcoran

“Well, we fought hard for Turner Corcoran. We had to start fighting early on for him and I have to give a little bit of credit to his high school basketball coach who is a huge Nebraska fan and helped us along the way. Turner hit it off with us. Turner hit it off with Coach Austin. We are just up the road from where he lives, and he is just as good of an offensive lineman as I saw on tape in the entire country. We knew we weren’t going to have very many spots for offensive linemen, and we ended up getting two, both from the state of Kansas that we feel great about. Turner really was the cornerstone for this recruiting class.”

You might be wondering why we don’t have more offensive linemen in this class. I am sure that you - if you’re “OFFENSIVE LINEMEN GUY” - is very disappointed in how things turned out.

It’s okay. You can complain. Please do.

However, we are not running Stanford’s offense, nor is it 1935. We are not going to line up with 9 offensive lineman, a quarterback and a running back (or a spinner, for that matter).

We have offensive linemen. We got a couple more today. We’ll be fine.