Former Husker QB Martinez on podcast discusses extent of jaw injury, reasons for leaving NU | Football

By the end of the regular season, Nebraska fans knew junior quarterback Adrian Martinez played through a broken jaw and a high ankle sprain before a torn labrum in his throwing shoulder ultimately cut his last year as the Huskers’ starting quarterback short. 

On his Athletes Unfiltered podcast this week, Martinez said he wasn’t thrilled his injury details were publicized and offered details about the extent of his broken jaw. He also discussed his rationale for deciding to transfer from NU shortly after concluding a 3-9 regular season. 

Martinez ripped through details surrounding the broken jaw, suffered Sept. 25 at Michigan State. Some revelations were peculiar — an X-ray technician at MSU pestering him with paperwork — and others were unpleasant — he at one point put a steak in a blender to try to keep his protein uptake while relegated to a liquid diet.

Some specific elements were, well, jaw-dropping. Martinez, now at Kansas State, said NU doctors consulted with people at Mayo Clinic and Vanderbilt to arrive at the ultimate decision, which was to rubber band his mouth shut instead of wiring it shut. 

That process included drilling six screws into his gums to attach the rubber bands to. 

“They numbed me with lidocaine and like cranked the screws into my mouth, pressing down, and they went right into the gums,” he said. “In between the teeth because they didn’t want to hit on the roots so it wouldn’t be too painful, but they’d have to get re-tightened every week or so.” 

That way he could talk, including with reporters. He called it part of the “ruse” to keep the extent of the injury under wraps that he took the rubber bands off before news conferences after games and on Mondays during the season. 

The break in his jaw displaced the bone enough that Martinez said his mouth still doesn’t open and close the way it did before the injury and it may never. When head coach Scott Frost confirmed the break on Nov. 6 after the Huskers lost to Ohio State, he said he felt comfortable saying it in part because after the upcoming bye week, Martinez would be fully healed. Martinez said he was told the full fusion of his jaw back into place will take 5-6 months and it’s still something he takes care to pay attention to today. 

The fact that the nature of the injury got out — Fox broadcaster Gus Johnson mentioned it on the broadcast and Frost confirmed the news after the game — bothered Martinez. 

When Frost walked away from the podium and Martinez approached it, a sports information director stopped Martinez briefly and apprised him of what had been said. 

“‘Hey, just so you know, Coach Frost just addressed your broken jaw and it’s like, out, officially now,'” Martinez recounted. “I was a little shocked. Obviously, we had just lost the game and that wasn’t something I was necessarily prepared to talk about and didn’t have any knowledge it was going to be revealed.

“So it was definitely a surprise to me, but I found out right then and then seconds later I was on the podium.”

Martinez said he wished he had been able to talk about the injury after the season and that he had kept the circle so tight on who knew the true extent of it that some of his teammates and some of his family only found out that day of the Ohio State game. 

“I didn’t think it was appropriate to be talked about at that time given the result of the game and the timeframe,” he said. “It was something very personal and private to me and I wanted to be the person to tell it. My grandparents didn’t know, you know? My grandma was texting me, like, ‘Hey, you have a broken jaw?’ Yeah, sorry you had to find out over a (expletive) broadcast on Fox or a news conference postgame. I wanted to be able to tell that myself and I wasn’t (able to). I know, that’s not incredibly unique. I know other athletes have stories that aren’t able to be shared or they can’t necessarily tell their own narrative. … 

“It’s the industry, it’s part of it. It sucks. I do feel like in my situation it could have been avoided. I wasn’t looking for excuses. That’s why it wasn’t put out there, or part of the reason. For me, that was almost like creating an excuse and I didn’t want that, but not everything’s in your grasp or your control.” 

Why play through such an injury? 

Martinez said he told his teammates at practice, “Hey, this is what we’re about. We’re playing for something. I’m playing for something. Let’s keep this going.” 

Ultimately, Martinez’s season and NU career ended when he suffered a torn labrum against Wisconsin and missed the season finale against Iowa. Echoing what Frost said after the season, Martinez said he and the head coach were in regular communication up until he decided to transfer. 

Martinez said the shoulder injury took, in his mind, declaring for the NFL Draft out of the equation. 

“I sort of thought of it in simple terms,” he said. “Say if I’m a late-round guy or an undrafted free agent and I get an opportunity and I get in a camp and my shoulder’s not 100%, am I really going to be able to maximize that opportunity as opposed to say next year I’m in the same position, late round, undrafted, whatever, I go and I can really maximize that opportunity. I felt much stronger about that.

“It was really between transferring or staying and playing another year at Nebraska.” 

He decided to leave and ended up at Kansas State after talking to people he trusted and soliciting opinions on how the NFL might view him after four years at NU. 

“I wanted to know their perspective on my game, what I needed to improve on and if there was an opinion out there whether staying at Nebraska or going somewhere else would be better for me,” he said. “I felt like after hearing some of those things, going somewhere else was a better option. And I think that had more to do with me than it had to do with Nebraska — proving myself in a new space and a different offense that can show some of the skills that I have that I wasn’t showing at Nebraska, little things like that — and less to do with necessarily what we were doing at Nebraska or not doing.” 

Martinez said Frost tried to convince him to stay but understood why he wanted to leave. 

“I felt like the best decision for me was to go somewhere else,” Martinez said. “Ultimately I think he was able to respect that.”