McCaffrey no stranger to competition
True freshman quarterback Luke McCaffrey finds himself entrenched in a battle to find his spot on the depth chart behind starter Adrian Martinez. It's quite the competition for being his first-ever fall camp at Nebraska, but it's nothing new to him as he was born with a competitive gene.
The 6-foot-2, 200-pound McCaffrey is the youngest of four brothers that have all played college football. The oldest, Max, played at Duke and for the San Francisco 49ers, Christian played for Stanford and is currently with the Carolina Panthers, and Dylan is currently a quarterback at Michigan. His father, Ed, was a standout receiver at Stanford and played in the NFL for 13 years. His mother, Lisa, was a soccer player at Stanford and her father, David Sime, was an Olympic sprinter winning a silver medal in the 100 meters in 1960.
McCaffrey grew up holding his own in the backyard football games he and his brothers would play.
"They were intense, pretty competitive," McCaffrey said about the battles in the backyard when he was younger. "We’d usually go oldest-youngest together, depending on the day, I’d say we were about 50-50."
McCaffrey committed to Nebraska before Scott Frost had even coached his first game for the Huskers, let alone before he knew Adrian Martinez would be NU's starter as a true freshman. For some, that may have had an impact on their recruitment, but not for McCaffrey.
"It’s weird because a year ago, I was a fan of Nebraska, I wasn’t here yet," McCaffrey said about the quarterback competition now. "So I don’t know if I can really have a say in that but my mission is to always compete and try to be the best player that I can be personally while uplifting the teammates around me. That’s kind of the mission that doesn’t change necessarily.
"The idea of competition should always be on the quarterback’s mind, especially. You see every quarterback in this room wants to be the starter so we can do that in an awesome manner. That’s the best part about having those four guys is we all root for each other and try to uplift each other when also trying to improve ourselves."
Quarterback coach Mario Verduzco has been impressed with McCaffrey since he joined the team as an early enrollee last January. The young quarterback has especially impressed with his knowledge of the system as he missed very few of the 722 questions from Verduzco's famous playbook test.
“I tell you what, he did a tremendous job on his playbook test, man," Verduzco said about McCaffrey. "I mean, it was just out of sight. So that part of his profile is I feel is solid. Obviously, he’s a high work ethic guy and a great young guy, but it’s just a matter of him getting reps and getting exposure.
“He’s doing a nice job. I know the day before yesterday we wanted to give him some reps with the ones and boy, he did a nice job. He really did. So he’s been doing really well.”
McCaffrey's mindset is just to attack every meeting and practice with everything he has and see how things play out. He understands there has to be some patience involved in the process, which in today's world can be somewhat rare, especially with quarterbacks.
"That’s with life," McCaffrey said about having patience. "That’s why football is such a cool game. [It] teaches lessons, not just about the game.
"All you can do is work and keep competing. You see guys everyday with stories that they just kept putting their nose to the grindstone and, eventually, their time comes. They seize their opportunity and that’s all a player can wish for."
