Head coach Scott Frost restored a major sense of hope around Nebraska when he suggested there was a chance that starting quarterback Adrian Martinez could return to action this week.

But while Nebraska feels much better about the true freshman’s long-term injury outlook, the staff is still making sure it’s ready in case Martinez is held out vs. Troy.

Frost said sophomore Andrew Bunch, who held his own in his first game action after replacing Martinez in the fourth quarterback against Colorado, would get plenty of reps with the first-team offense this week in practice.

No. 3 quarterback Matt Masker will also see an increased workload, and NU will even have a fourth emergency QB ready just in case the worst-case scenario unfolds.

If Martinez cannot play on Saturday, Frost said Nebraska’s offensive game plan wouldn’t change much at all with Bunch running the show.

“We’re not going to change because of who he is,” Frost said. “I’ll alter it a little to make sure he’s comfortable with what we have in, but there’s not going to be wholesale changes. He knows our stuff, and he’s done a good job running it.”

As if Nebraska wasn’t upset enough about losing its star quarterback in the first game of the season, seeing how Martinez's injury potentially happened only made matters worse.

Replays of the injury appear to show Colorado sophomore linebacker Jacob Callier grabbing and twisting Martinez’s right leg after the play.

Frost didn’t want to speculate on any intent but said he and his staff saw enough on the replays to justify submitting the play to both the Big Ten and Pac-12 conference offices for further review.

“I’m careful how I answer that,” Frost said when asked if he thought it was a dirty play. “You never want to think anybody on a football field would potentially try to hurt someone else, and nobody except somebody that does that knows what the intentions were.

“I will tell you we have a (video) angle that doesn’t look very good, so we turned the play into the Big Ten and the Pac-12, and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

While the quarterback situation stole the majority of the headlines, some other major news that broke was that Nebraska had finally handed out its first Blackshirts of the season before Monday morning’s practice.

Seven players arrived to find the honorary black practice jerseys hanging in their locker: defensive linemen Mick Stoltenberg and Freedom Akinmoladun; linebackers Luke Gifford, Mohamed Barry, Dedrick Young, and Tyrin Ferguson; and cornerback Dicaprio Bootle.

Frost said several other players were close to earning Blackshirts as well following the defense’s strong first showing vs. Colorado, and there was still a chance more could be distributed going forward.

For the players who earned the first wave of Blackshirts, it was an honor all took great pride and responsibility in receiving.

“It means a lot to get it from this staff,” Barry said. “It means a lot to get it from my position coach, Coach (Barrett) Ruud, the all-time (Nebraska) tackles leader. He’s a great player, a Blackshirt, who did a lot for this program. So for him to give one not only to me but to Dedrick, it means a lot to us because it means a lot to him. It’s a great feeling.”

As Frost mentioned, Nebraska isn’t going to completely handcuff its offense should Bunch end up getting the start vs. Troy.

In fact, according to his teammates, Bunch showed all offseason that he is fully capable of running the offense just fine.

“On a daily basis in fall camp he was repping sometimes with the ones, and he gave us a lot of problems,” Barry said. “I know he’s a real, real effective runner, and I know he’s going to do good things while he’s out there.”

Bunch ended up 4-of-9 passing for 49 yards and rushed once for one yard in his two drives of action against Colorado.

But he was also placed in two very difficult situations, facing a first-and-20 following a penalty when he replaced Martinez and then having to conduct a potential game-winning final drive.

Senior running back Devine Ozigbo said Bunch had shown the ability to be a dynamic quarterback in his own right, even if Martinez stole the show in that regard before his injury.

“I think Andrew’s a playmaker,” Ozigbo said. “We have a lot of confidence in all of them, but I really think Andrew can get the job done if it’s on him this week. We’re going to let him ride, and I think he’s going to impress a lot of people.”

The 2018 season began the same way 2017 ended for Nebraska: with a loss.

That said, the Huskers noticed a difference in the feeling in the locker room following Saturday’s defeat to Colorado compared to the eight losses last season.

It wasn’t so much a feeling of disappointment and feeling sorry for themselves, but rather a sense of anger and frustration that they let what should have been a victory slip through their fingers.

Based on how the players responded during Monday’s first practice, NU has already hit the ground running in turning the page to a bounce-back opportunity this week vs. Troy.

“Obviously guys were still really upset after the game because it was a close one and it got away from us,” Stoltenberg said. “As far as today, I think guys had fire in their eyes ready to work. I think we had a good practice, speaking defensively, and I thought guys were getting around and flying to the ball. I think we’re going to respond well.”

After what he saw from his offensive line on Saturday and then further reviewing the game film afterward, Frost came away very pleased with how his offensive line performed in its first test of the season.

The only negative was that the unit had a couple of mistakes that resulted in some costly missed opportunities.

“I thought they did a good job. They fought,” Frost said. “It was pretty clear watching the tape that we were the more physical team and won the battle on both sides of the line of scrimmage.

“We made some mistakes there. We missed a protection on a play where their corner fell down and we had a guy wide open. We made very few mental errors on the offensive line, which is great to see. The one or two that we did make cost us a couple plays.”

Nebraska’s defense ended up putting together a surprisingly strong all-around effort against Colorado, but it had to overcome a disastrous start to the day to do so.

The Buffaloes’ offense essentially did whatever it wanted to open the game following consecutive NU turnovers, jumping out to a 14-0 lead without much of any resistance from the Husker defense.

That all changed once Nebraska figured out that the only way it was going to turn the game around was through better communication on the field.

“That’s one of those things that you wish you had a first game for, but that’s no excuse,” senior safety Tre Neal said. “(The communication) needed to be better on those first couple drives and it wasn’t. We got it fixed, but that was a big reason for those first couple drives for sure.”

Gifford said part of the problem was the defense got a little too caught up in the moment of having to play sudden-change defense and operating under the heavy crowd noise of Memorial Stadium for the first time.

“It’s always different in practice,” Gifford said. “You don’t have 90,000 screaming fans. It’s an advantage for us, but it’s also a disadvantage. If you don’t talk and use signals and all those things, it can hurt you.”

Nebraska reeled off several explosive plays against Colorado, which were sights for sore eyes after hardly getting any last season.

But there could have been a few more that may have changed the game a bit had the Huskers gotten better blocking from their wide receivers and tight ends on the perimeter.

“We had a couple option plays where if we would have gotten a block it would have been a big play for us,” Frost said of NU’s perimeter blocking on Saturday. “We threw a couple bubbles (screens) that should have been yards and weren’t because we didn’t block well on the perimeter.

“That’s got to be a big part of this game, when we get the ball outside it’s got to turn into big yards for us and big plays for us. We’ll keep practicing that and trying to fix it."

There probably wasn’t going to be much of an emotional letdown anyway coming off such a disappointing loss as what Nebraska suffered to Colorado, but the Huskers are still giving Troy their utmost attention this week.

Coming off an 11-win season and a Sun Belt Conference championship last season, the Trojans come to Lincoln with a 1-1 record and a 59-7 blowout of Florida A&M last week.

“I know Troy is going to bring it,” Barry said. “It’s no slouch of a game. We’re going to bring it to them also.”

Hungry for their first win in nearly 11 months, Gifford said the Huskers had no shortage of motivation to start the week.

“There was a really good sense of urgency starting out in the weight room this morning,” Gifford said. “We got after it in the weight room then went out to practice and really got after it again. So I was proud of the guys and the way that we responded. It was definitely a good start to the week.”

As far as energy and focus go, morning kickoffs haven’t exactly been great for Nebraska over the years.

But after switching to morning practices under Frost, the Huskers have embraced hitting the ground running to start their days.

Not only was there scientific research supporting the benefit of working in the morning as opposed to afternoons or evenings, Frost and his staff also saw it as a way to directly address the hurdles that come for teams in getting mentally geared up for early kicks.

When Nebraska takes on Troy at 11 a.m. on Saturday, don’t expect the team to have any trouble waking up on the field.

“We love that,” Gifford said. “We get up early, so the earlier, the better.”