Getting Off the Turf: An Ode to a Backup QB

Noah Vedral wasn’t even supposed to be here.

Not starting at Nebraska in front of 90,000 human tornado sirens howling like mid-afternoon Lycanthropes in a Big 10 battle between the Indiana Hoosiers and the Nebraska Cornhuskers in 2019.

Not when he’s from a town of 4,400 people. Not when, after he graduated high school, he packed up his small town roots, read the defense, and threw them directly to the University of Central Florida. Not when his coach left almost immediately. Not when he transferred and sat out and waited and watched from behind one of the most hyped quarterbacks in recent Husker history.

And certainly not when he dropped back and got tilt-a-whirled directly onto his ass by IU’s Jamar Johnson, fumbling the ball to the Hoosiers at the Nebraska 25.

And yet…

Noah Vedral was always supposed to be here.

His family lived here. They played here. They did what so many football players did in the ’90s: they won here. So, when this tough local kid turned himself into a human boomerang and ended up right back where he started, with the coach he always wanted to play for and in the place so ingrained in his family’s lineage that it probably shows up on their 23-and-me-results screen:

He was supposed to be here, because people like Vedral are so Nebraska that it doesn’t matter if they’re in Orlando or Champaign or Tashkent, Uzbekistan, they’re never far from this place.

And so it was, that this human juxtaposition found himself unceremoniously tossed onto the ground, while the ball slipped from his hands directly to a waiting defensive lineman.

Done. Over with. Toast.

This is what happens when a guy isn’t supposed to be there.

But then something happened. Something that was always meant to happen.

Noah Vedral got up.

And he didn’t just get up. No. This victim of a pre-mediated mauling, sprang back up to his feet and started giving chase, even though he was way behind.

He was nearly 5-yards back when he got both cleats under him and the Hoosier with ball had a full head of steam, paydirt awaiting him. Allen Stallings was about to make a like a doctor in rural Nebraska: housecall.

I’ll admit, here, that I had taken my eyes off the play. It was my son’s first football game and we were eye to eye, his little gray-blue eyes staring back at me from his perch standing on the bench seating behind us so he could see over the guys in row 39.

But then, from the corner of my eye: there he was. Vedral. Somehow. Someway. Vedral. And closing fast.

The big guy started doing what big guys do, his limbs beginning to mutiny as the lactic symphony in his legs began to play their opening notes: he started tying up.

And Noah Vedral started doing what Noah Vedral does: fighting.

Closer.

A yard at a time. A foot at a time.

This quarterback — the guy who wasn’t supposed to be here — showed exactly how much he belonged. And he showed exactly why he belongs. He got up. And he just fucking went for it.

Vedral caught him. Ran him down from behind. Went from ass kicked, turf-sprawled mistake to something entirely, wholly different.

The entire thing took about ten seconds and Indiana scored so fast afterwards that we were left, collectively, with little time to think about that play. But it was, simply put, one of the greatest plays I’ve ever seen by a Nebraska football player.

Football is perhaps the guiltiest of all sports in relying so heavily on clichés. Terms like “grit” and “toughness” get slapped into every coach‘s machine gun of tired-ass speeches and preaches and fired out so often that it’s nearly impossible to properly define the raw fire of determination that we saw explode somewhere deep inside Noah Vedral’s combustion engine of a heart on this play.

Buried in the grave of another ugly loss, in a another ugly season, this play — this uncut diamond — will stick with me forever. Vedral showed exactly who he is. He showed where he is.

Now, we just need to find a few more guys who don’t belong here to show us how wrong we are.