Gebbia striving to become Frost's next star quarterback

Tristan Gebbia earned the immediate reputation as a true football film junkie from the day he stepped on campus last spring as an early-enrollee true freshman.

Those habits haven’t changed one bit, even after the staff who recruited him was replaced by head coach Scott Frost and Co. The only notable difference has been the subject matter.

In an effort to catch himself up with all of the nuances of Frost’s high-powered offensive system and the quarterback’s role within it, Gebbia has studied two of the best examples possible for how to thrive in the system - Central Florida’s McKenzie Milton and former Oregon Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota.

While he knows he obviously has a long way to go before he reaches the level of those two standouts, the redshirt freshman now at least has a solid idea of what it’s going to take to be Frost’s next star signal caller.

“There’s a lot of things you can take from those guys,” Gebbia said. “Those guys did a great job at it, and if there’s people to emulate, it’s those two. Their efficiency and the way that they led their team and how successful they were was really impressive.”

A former four-star prospect who was ranked the No. 6 pro-style quarterback in the 2017 class coming out of Calabasas (Calif.) High School, Gebbia might actually fit the mold of what Frost is looking for in his future QB.

Though the 6-foot-3 Gebbia came to Lincoln to run Mike Riley’s West Coast system, he said he actually ran more of a “Run and Shoot” scheme at Calabasas that was much more similar to the offenses used at Washington State and Cal.

The main issue for him now, aside from adjusting to the blistering tempo Frost’s system requires, has been making himself more of a dual-threat quarterback.

Gebbia said he was one of just two quarterbacks on Calabasas’ roster his senior year, so he was told to take as little contact as possible. However, when he did have to run the ball, he said he was much more productive than some might think.

“I didn’t do a whole lot of running in high school, but when I did I always felt like I got us eight, nine, 10 yards,” Gebbia said. “So when I had to run I was able to.”

Listed at 185 pounds on Nebraska’s official spring roster, Gebbia said he wasn’t sure how much weight he had added over the course of the team’s rigorous winter strength and conditioning program.

But whatever the scale says, Gebbia feels more than capable of managing the physical toll of an increased role in the running game.

“I don’t know how much I’ve gained, but I feel really good,” Gebbia said. “I feel like I can handle the pounding.”

One of the misconceptions about Frost’s quarterbacks is that the position requires top-flight speed in order to be fully effective. Frost said that while it would always be nice to have a QB who could run a 4.4-second 40-yard dash, his teams have won a lot of games over the years with guys who ran in the 4.7s.

A perfect example of that was Darron Thomas, who only ran a 4.7 40 but went 24-3 as a starter at Oregon and led the Ducks to two straight BCS bowl games, including the 2011 national championship.

Frost said that while Gebbia isn’t the fastest guy on the team by any stretch, he was plenty athletic enough to be a weapon in this offense.

“Geb’s got good speed,” Frost said. “I think more than speed, it’s getting him bigger and stronger so that he can take the hits and do those types of things. We’re going to ask the guys to carry the ball some, and there’s big guys in this league.”

Given how close Gebbia was to Riley and former offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf, and the fact that his friend and Calabasas teammate, receiver Keyshawn Johnson Jr., transferred after the previous staff was fired, there were certainly questions about Gebbia’s future in Lincoln.

But he said he never even thought about leaving Nebraska at any point this offseason, especially when he found out the golden opportunity that potentially awaited him playing for Frost.

“Well, Nebraska’s my home now,” Gebbia said. “I love it here. Everything about it is great. The people here have been really good to me. I heard great things about Coach Frost coming in, obviously he won all of those coaching awards.

“That was tough to be like, ‘Nah, I’m not staying for this.’ This is a special moment in time, and I couldn’t leave my teammates. Those are my guys.”