Kansas St. QB Adrian Martinez explains decision to leave Nebraska

Quarterback Adrian Martinez was a four-year starter at Nebraska but made the decision to transfer to Kansas State for his final season of eligibility. Martinez opened up about his transfer decision and offered a brutally honest explanation for his move.

Martinez appeared on SiriusXM’s Big 12 Radio on Wednesday and said he wanted to experience a winning season and play in a bowl game in a bid to reverse narratives he feels have become attached to him.

“The narratives I’m fighting against, well, I haven’t been to a bowl game and I haven’t had a winning season,” Martinez said, via Nick Kosko of 247 Sports. “Now football is a team sport, but I play quarterback and often times you get associated with those kinds of things and I want to win. I want to go play in a bowl game and I want to win a bowl game. So that was another reason why I came here. I feel like we have a great opportunity to win.”

Martinez was Scott Frost’s first quarterback recruit at Nebraska and was named the team’s starter as a true freshman in 2018. Since then, things have been up and down for him, but it’s certainly fair to say he probably expected the team to do better than 15-29 over his four years there. Martinez’s comments are an honest admission that Nebraska was expected to succeed by now under Frost, and the quarterback was not optimistic about things turning around in 2022.

Frost managed to keep his job at Nebraska for 2022, but he will definitely enter the season on the hot seat. Martinez not wanting to be part of that drama is entirely logical.