Nebraska OLB Garrett Nelson is grateful to be learning football every day

Outside linebacker Garrett Nelson is known as the most fired-up player on Nebraska’s team. If it was possible to literally run through a brick wall, Nelson could probably do it.

“I'm the biggest football guy there is,” Nelson said. “I love playing. I'd play in the parking lot every day if I could.”

Nelson is so in love with the game that during his freshman season he said he was almost too intense and amped up.

“Obviously I'm like the craziest wired dude out there,” Nelson said. “The biggest thing for me was relaxing because I get so tense and I just got to going a million miles an hour. One of the biggest things for me was just relaxing and trusting myself.

“I would get so tunnel vision like a deer in headlights that I wasn't being the football player I know I could be,” Nelson added. “So relaxing, breathing, being okay, reading things and then when the play goes, that's when I turned to the high wire dude, going nuts and stuff like that.”

During the 2020 season, the Scottsbluff native started in all eight games and had to adjust to being a key part of Nebraska’s defense. Something different from when he didn’t play consistently his freshman season.

The third-year sophomore said it took him about four or five games to fully adjust to the momentum and ups and downs of playing an entire game. Everything came together in the last three games.

“I felt like I was getting back to how I expect myself to play,” Nelson said. “The plays I was making, the things I was doing. I really started to figure it out.

“I wanted to translate that and pick up right where I left off from the fall into the spring, that was successful then made another level (up) in the spring, then raise it again later in this fall and just keep progressing stacking those up.”

Along with learning to be a starter, the game began to slow down for Nelson as he hit his stride in college football. He was able to track the ball better, read the skill players and understand his role on a deeper level.

In high school, Nelson said he didn’t need to know as much about the intricacies of the game because he had a physical advantage playing in Class B football at Scottsbluff.

“In high school, you're just kind of bigger and stronger than everybody,” Nelson said. “The coach is like 'run that way', 'go get the ball'.”

At Nebraska, Nelson learned even more about the game he loves so much.

“Learning football, still learning football, I'll probably always be learning football my whole life and it’s a great process,” he said. “It's very frustrating, sometimes, but I have the smartest coaches in the world. I have the best guys around me.”

Just like in high school when he could just out muscle players, he was always just ‘the guy’ on the football and wrestling teams. His coaches and teammates would look to him for leadership because of his athletic and natural leadership ability.

In college, where there are many capable leaders, Nelson has been putting in work to learn how to be a leader in order to accomplish his goal of being a captain at Nebraska.

Nelson is surrounded by many great leaders like Ben Stille, Deontai Williams, Marquel Dismuke, JoJo Domann and more that he has been watching closely to see how they interact with their teammates and each other.

“A really smart guy told me that when you're voted captain or when you're a leader, people always seem to change,” Nelson said. “But the reason they were voted a captain or a leader is because of the way they are.”

And so every day is a day that Nelson strives to become a better player, teammate and leader at Nebraska. It’s also another day that he gets to wake up and do what he loves most, play football.