Nebraska's QB situation remains on thin ice for Saturday's PSU game
Nebraska’s quarterback situation remains on thin ice, as head coach Mike Riley’s team prepares for one of their toughest games of the season at Penn State.
Riley said on Tuesday’s Big Ten Coaches Teleconference that starter Tanner Lee continues to make his way through the concussion protocol, but he remains optimistic he’ll be able to play Saturday.
“I’m remaining optimistic, but you know the protocol, it goes day to day,” Riley told HuskerOnline. “I think he’s cleared one hurdle, so then you go to the next one. He certainly won’t practice on (Tuesday), we’ll see what the next step brings. I’m remaining optimistic that he will be able to play.”
In the meantime, Riley and offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf remain confident in redshirt freshman Patrick O’Brien that he’ll be able to get the job done this week in practice.
“He’s been engaged and really, really wants to be a player,” Riley said. “He’s stayed engaged and worked hard. In practice yesterday, it was actually rather seamless with him taking the snaps because Tanner was not able to.”
Working behind O’Brien with the No. 2 offense is junior college walk-on transfer Andrew Bunch. The Tennessee native has spent this entire season as NU’s scout team quarterback, and this is the first week he’s been up with the top offensive units practicing Nebraska’s playbook.
Before that, Bunch hasn’t run the Nebraska offense in a practice setting since Fall Camp.
“Andrew (Bunch) is a solid, solid guy and actually has spent a good part of this season as the scout team quarterback and the defensive staff loves the work that he’s done,” Riley said. “He’s very contentious and a very good person and an efficient person at quarterback.”
Riley also didn’t seem worried Bunch hasn’t been running Nebraska’s offense until this week in practice.
“The one thing I’ll say about him is he’s in every quarterback meeting every day,” Riley said. “So as far as the intellect and academic part of what we are doing, I think he’s in touch with it. Now you make a great point, he actually hasn’t had hardly any reps running the offense. He took his turns as the back-up yesterday, and because of his preparation did a nice job. That was also rather seamless, so I was impressed by him. I appreciated the work he’s put in.”
Riley said his emergency No. 3 if Lee couldn’t go would be junior Zack Darlington, who actually didn’t even travel to Minnesota last week because he’s been out with mononucleosis the last several weeks. Darlington was medically cleared to travel last week, but the staff chose to keep him home, which forced Drew Brown to work with a different holder for the third game in a row.
