Since setting foot on campus, Wandale Robinson has been one of the best offensive players for Nebraska by a country mile. The player, who was mostly a running back in high school has taken on a kind of "slash" role for the Huskers.
Carrying the ball on the ground, and offering a weapon to be feared through the air, he was the go-to offensive player for the team in his freshman season.
That season was cut short late in the year, when he went down with an injury against the Purdue Boilermakers. While there was talk the weeks directly after he left that game early that he might be able to come back, it turned out his season was effectively over.
Because the Nebraska football program is notoriously mum about injuries to its players, the only talk about just what happened to Robinson was mostly speculation and rumors. There were even a few that he was thinking about leaving the team ala Maurice Washington and that's why he wasn't playing. That talk was proven to be 100% false on Monday afternoon.
Nebraska football player's 'pop'
During the first press conference of Nebraska's spring practice, Robinson strode to the mic to answer a wide range of questions. Among those was just what happened to him at the end of the 2019 season.
It turns out, as Robinson told the collected media, that his issue was a hamstring that "popped." He wasn't more specific than that but it appears it was a bad sprain. A tear would likely still have him talking about missing spring practice and that doesn't appear to be the case here.
The running back/wide receiver said even after he felt his hamstring go, he still wanted to finish the Purdue game. He said he was quite upset he wasn't allowed to but now realized in hindsight it was the right call.
Before he was hurt in that game, he had racked up seven catches for 46 yards and carried the ball 12 times for 29 yards. Nebraska ended up losing that game 31-27.
Not 100 percent
Wandale Robinson had a bit of a learning curve when it came to playing in the college ranks. After dominating the Kentucky football landscape in high school, Robinson said he came into Nebraska thinking he could do the same. While he did have a very good season when talking about standards for true freshmen, the star offensive player says he learned quite a bit last year.
Among the most important lesson Robinson cited was the realization that you have to "take what you can get" and that's especially the case when talking about how healthy you're going to feel during the season.
In addition to the hamstring injury that eventually ended his season for all intents and purposes, he said he was banged up most of the year. Despite saying he was never really 100 percent in 2019, he finished the season with 40 catches for 453 yards and two touchdowns, while carrying the ball 88 times for 340 yards.