QB Lee works to keep focus in tough week
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By BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
He told himself when he arrived to Lincoln almost three years ago he wasn’t going to get caught up in the headlines or what the local talking heads had to say.
It was a good philosophy then. It’s a better philosophy now.
“Really, when I first got here I kind of looked at it like you’re in a fish bowl,” Husker junior quarterback Zac Lee said Tuesday. “You have to just put everything on the back burner, even the positives. If you look at the positives and start reading your own stuff, you get caught up in it.”
As for those negatives? Same game plan.
“No one knows what is going on in our meeting room and practices; only we know,” Lee said. “That is how it is. I’ve just tried to keep myself focused on what I can control and stay focused and just go from there. It’s tough, but you have to do it for your own mental sanity really.”
This would not be the easiest of weeks for anybody, let alone a 22-year-old college kid.
Lee heard some boos after his last pass in Saturday’s 31-10 loss to Texas Tech, and some fans began chanting the name of backup Cody Green.
He watched as the true freshman directed the offense for the final 10 minutes of the contest.
Those aren’t exactly the days you envision when you grow up dreaming of being a quarterback.
“It wasn’t great, but as a quarterback you have a responsibility to stay in it and support whoever is in there,” Lee said. “In the end, these are my guys. These are the guys I’ve worked with for however long now. You have to support them in any way you can.”
Lee: Pressure part of the job
The benching of Lee in that game has many thinking Green could be on his way to starting soon. But that may be the wrong assumption to make.
Though it appears both quarterbacks are sharing reps in practice, Husker coach Bo Pelini said Tuesday “nothing’s changed” in regard to the quarterback situation.
Asked if that means the junior Lee is still the guy for now, Pelini said yes. But the coach also said it’s a competition every week to see who will play.
Pelini said Lee has practiced well over the past few weeks.
“He just has to carry it over to the game,” Pelini said. “He’s got to stop putting so much pressure on himself. I think that’s one of the deals. He has to learn how to handle that, handle the ‘negativity’ and some of those things and just go out and play. He’s one of 11, but he’s an important one of 11.”
As for those critics...
“Obviously, it’s going to affect the guy,” Pelini said. “He feels like the whole state of Nebraska is against him. That will affect anybody. I’ve been there as a coach. You fight through it. You perservere. You take an ‘I’ll show you’ attitude.”
“It’s disappointing when people boo and people do those things, but that’s human nature and that’s who they are. ... You have to fight through and you find out what’s deep inside of you.”
A show-you attitude? Lee said he’s always had that.
“That is kind of my mentality regardless of what the situation is,” he said. “Obviously, having to go through junior college and that stuff, I feel like there is something to prove every week. That is my mentality and that won’t change because of this.”
Green said Lee has maintained great composure in the face of adversity. If any criticism is eating at Lee, Green can hardly tell.
The freshman isn’t getting too excited that some people are chanting his name, either. He knows that the favorite player on many teams is often the backup quarterback.
“With me being close to Zac, I feel sorry for him tremendously,” Green said. “I wish I could take some of the pain off of him because I just don’t want that feeling for anybody that a whole state would just jump on somebody’s bandwagon one minute and then jump right off the next.”
For better or worse, it’s the quarterback’s life. It’s life in the Husker fish bowl.
The son of an NFL quarterback, Lee has been around the game long enough to know critics can leave as fast as they arrived.
“It’s not easy being in this state and being in the situation I’m in. I’ll be honest with you guys like that,” Lee said. “But it is what it is. There’s nothing I can really do about it except go out there on Saturday and do my thing.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at bchristopherson@journalstar.com or 473-7439.
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