Connect with us

Football

How Nebraska’s Ty Robinson is leaving impact in last year








Nebraska’s Ty Robinson talks with reporters during Big Ten Media Days on Wednesday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.




INDIANAPOLIS – Ty Robinson didn’t take long to find.

On a crowded Lucas Oil Stadium field of reporters, broadcasters and team representatives, the 6-foot-6, 310-pounder wearing a navy sport coat and red power tie stood out. Nebraska’s defensive lineman made the rounds at Big Ten Media Days with a big handshake and bigger smile as one of the most gregarious of the 54 league player reps.

Fitting for a Husker whose presence for his sixth and final college season looms equally large.

The 23-year-old Robinson has been around so long that he was part of a 2019 freshman focus group along with the likes of Wan’Dale Robinson and Luke McCaffrey in which Nebraska asked for feedback about what they wanted in a new facility still in the planning stages.

Players’ No. 1 priority was recovery. Robinson grinned as he listed off the options now available in the Tom Osborne Legacy Complex that has come fully online in recent weeks. Hot tub. Cold tub. Sauna. Red-light therapy. Wet float and dry float. Ideal stuff for a hulking defender banging around in Big Ten trenches.

People are also reading…

“I thought I was never going to get to enjoy it,” Robinson said. “Then when I heard it was going to be done by this year I was like, ‘Well, maybe staying back another year is not too bad.’”

Robinson declared his decision to return — capitalizing on the free season of eligibility from the pandemic — during the week of the Iowa game last November. He revisited his reasons multiple times this week with reporters both local and national, pointing to another year of development under coach Matt Rhule and his staff as well as a chance to end the Huskers’ bowl drought dating back to when he was in high school.

However Robinson builds on an All-Big Ten honorable-mention campaign — he logged 29 tackles and a team-best 11 quarterback hurries last year — his best work might already be complete. Both senior defensive back Isaac Gifford and center Ben Scott said in Indy that the big man opting in affected their own deliberations.

The trio could have been on NFL rosters into August. Instead each will run it back once more with Nebraska.

“Knowing he was willing to come back for another year and put in all that work and play, it definitely impacted my decision,” Gifford said. “He told me when he did it and I was like, ‘Oh.’ I was kind of surprised when he did it but at the same time I wasn’t.”

Said Scott, who enters his sixth college season: “Going against him and going against Nash (Hutmacher) every day, it’s iron sharpens iron at that point. He really makes me better.”

Robinson laughed that it felt a little like high school recruiting as he pitched both to stay in Lincoln. He did the same with linebacker John Bullock, who also is sticking around for year No. 6.

“I just want to win,” Robinson said. “I want to leave this place in a winning place and I think after last year, seeing what we did and the improvements we can make going into this year, I think it’s very possible to do what we want to do.”

Individually, Robinson said, he has no major quantifiable goals for the season. Talent evaluators last offseason who projected him as a late draft pick or undrafted signee noted his improved pass rush. They also wondered whether he liked to defend the run — Robinson shook his head at the idea that doubt could exist there.

Robinson a year ago was still recovering from offseason shoulder surgery that affected his performance well into Big Ten play. He pointed to the last three games — when he posted 11 tackles and five pass breakups with some of his highest snap totals — as a glimpse of what he can do across a full slate now.

“He’s a real nice off-the-field guy,” Gifford said. “Then we’re in there doing nine on seven or something and he turns into a mean son of a gun.”

The man with 47 career games (34 starts) to his name still can’t believe how time has moved like a rush end. The native of suburban Phoenix was a signing-day get in December 2018 after former coach Scott Frost and his entire staff made an in-home visit late in the process. The four-star recruit chose the Huskers on faith over Oregon and Nick Saban’s Alabama — his late father, Jason, and two uncles all played basketball at Chadron State while his mother, the former Tresha Hill, is an O’Neill native.

Robinson learned under past NU D-linemen, calling himself a “hodgepodge” of old teammates like Khalil and Carlos Davis, Darrion and Damion Daniels, Ben Stille and Casey Rogers. His peers these days are Hutmacher, Jimari Butler and Elijah Jeudy, with a host of underclassman linemen watching how he handles himself every day.

“Now I’m an older-er guy,” Robinson said. “I’m the old man of the room and an old man of the team. A bunch of guys, I think they respect me enough to listen to the rules. I don’t have to say much.”

Six years in college? The nutrition and health and health sciences major — he graduated with his degree in May 2023 — never would have guessed. He’s the guy who lays down and puts on a show at the end of the day instead of playing video games or going out. If football hadn’t worked out, he might have tried rodeo work wrestling steer.

He has a name-image-likeness deal with a local business promoting water heaters, with a television commercial out this fall of him encouraging fans to “sack” their old ones. He spread a Big Red message in Indianapolis to anyone who would listen.

No regrets, Robinson said of one more year wearing the ‘N.’ And the best may well be yet to come.

“I’ve really found my place,” Robinson said. “I can call Nebraska home now.”

Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule speaks during a news conference at Indianapolis. Courtesy of the Big Ten Conference.







Source link

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Advertisement

Must See

Advertisement Enter ad code here
Advertisement

Facebook

Advertisement

More in Football