Watson: Early arrival serving QB Green well
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By BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
He is still 17, an age to match his jersey number, but already living the college life, already having his throwing motion critiqued by armchair quarterbacks across the state.
This is part of it, of course. Cody Green knew what was coming when he decided to move on from high school a semester ahead of his graduating class and come to Lincoln.
It’s not easy, not even for strong-armed quarterbacks who stand 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds. Husker head coach Bo Pelini even acknowledged upon the heralded quarterback’s midsemester arrival that Green faced “a hard situation to break into.”
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It’s hard enough to play quarterback well at this level. It’s even harder to play it well while being the youngest guy on the field. “It will be rocky at times,” Pelini said.
There are classes to focus on, hype to try to ignore and a playbook to make Green’s head spin. All that.
But with more than half of this year’s spring practices in the books, offensive coordinator Shawn Watson said the true freshman from Dayton, Texas, has “adapted very well.”
“Number one, let me say this: He’s a mature person,” Watson said. “He’s academically ready for this challenge which college has given him. And he’s going to benefit from having been here a semester in the fall.”
Prospective recruits and parents sometimes ask Watson what his thoughts are about a player coming to college in midsemester to participate in spring ball.
“I say, ‘It’s a case-by-case, individual thing,’” Watson said. “I don’t think it’s for everybody. I don’t.
“Then there’s others like Cody Green. I thought Cody Green was ready for it, just because of his maturity and where he was at in his life.”
Green is hardly the first to arrive to Lincoln early to get a jump-start on his college education, both on the field and off.
Curt Dukes, Harrison Beck, Patrick Witt, Kody Spano — all those quarterbacks came to Nebraska a semester early with big expectations.
And while perhaps nothing more than coincidence, it does not escape notice that three of those names left NU before completing their eligibility without ever starting a game. Dukes once said after his time at Nebraska that he probably would not have arrived a semester early had he to do it over again.
But others have come early and spoken well of the experience. Sophomore wide receiver Marcus Mendoza serves as an example.
He arrived in midsemester of the 2006-07 school year from Houston as an I-back.
“It gave me a chance to see what it was like before the other guys,” Mendoza said. “If I could have done it over again, I would have done the same thing.”
And Mendoza didn’t forget about his high school friends in the process. He even went back for his senior prom.
There were tough days, sure. Different culture, different weather, lecture halls with 200 people in them.
And there were all those books. Mendoza remembers the biggest one he got.
“When that playbook was given to me, I was just like, ‘This is a playbook?’ I thought it was another class or something,” Mendoza said. “It was just really hard trying to get all that stuff down, but coming early really helped me out with that.”
And as Mendoza reminds, he was just trying to learn the plays for a running back. The quarterback has to know more.
With all that information to compute, junior I-back Quentin Castille said this spring must be crazy for Green.
“I know it was crazy for me as a running back,” Castille said. “So I can just imagine what it’s like for him as a quarterback picking up blitzes. … I know it’s crazy for him. But he’ll get it down sooner or later. It’ll probably take him until December or something like it took me.”
Life’s about to get crazier.
There will be around 80,000 people who will show up in eight days to watch the spring game, many anxious to get their first glimpse of the new quarterback.
Hey, this kind of pressure is not for everyone.
“I think it goes back to the person,” Watson said. “Are they ready for the challenges? That all has to center around maturity.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com. Steven M. Sipple contributed to this report.
