How Nebraska’s Ty Robinson Made an Impact Last Year

On a crowded Lucas Oil Stadium field packed with reporters, broadcasters and team representatives, the 6-foot-4, 300-pound player stood out in a navy sport coat and red tie. The Nebraska defenseman made the rounds at Big Ten Media Days with a big handshake and an even bigger smile as one of the league’s most gregarious 54 representatives.

Fitting for a Husker whose presence is as great as ever going into his sixth and final college season.

Robinson, 23, has been around so long that in 2019 he was part of a freshman focus group, along with Wan’Dale Robinson and Luke McCaffrey, among others, in which Nebraska asked for feedback on what they wanted from a new facility that was still in the planning stages.

The players’ No. 1 priority was recovery. Robinson grinned as he listed the options now available at the Tom Osborne Legacy Complex, which has come fully online in recent weeks. Hot tub. Cold tub. Sauna. Red light therapy. Wet float and dry float. Ideal stuff for a towering defender pounding Big Ten trenches.

“I thought I would never be able to enjoy it,” Robinson said. “When I heard it was going to be done this year, I thought, ‘Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to stay another year.'”

Robinson announced his decision to return — taking advantage of the pandemic’s free season of eligibility — during the week of the Iowa game last November. He reiterated his reasons multiple times this week to reporters both locally and nationally, pointing to another year of development under coach Matt Rhule and his staff as well as a chance to end the Huskers’ bowl drought that dates back to when he was in high school.

But Robinson is building on an All-Big Ten honorable mention campaign — he recorded 29 tackles and a team-best 11 quarterback hurries last year — and his best work may already be done. Both senior defensive back Isaac Gifford and center Ben Scott said in Indy that the big man’s pick influenced their own considerations.

The trio could have been on NFL rosters until August. Instead, each will do it once more with Nebraska.

“Knowing that he was willing to come back for another year and put in all that work and play definitely influenced my decision,” Gifford said. “He told me when he did it and I was like, ‘Oh.’ I was a little surprised when he did it, but at the same time I wasn’t.”

Scott, who is entering his sixth college season, said: “Playing against him and Nash (Hutmacher) every day, it’s like iron is sharper than iron. He really makes me better.”

Robinson laughed that it felt a bit like recruiting in high school, as he pitched both to stay in Lincoln. He did the same with linebacker John Bullock, who is also staying for the No. 6 year.

“I just want to win,” Robinson said. “I want to leave this place as a winner and I think after last year, what we’ve done and the improvements we can make this year, it’s very possible to do what we want to do.”

Individually, Robinson said, he doesn’t have any big quantifiable goals for the season. Talent evaluators who projected him as a late draft pick or undrafted signee last season noted his improved pass rush. They also wondered whether he liked defending the run — Robinson shook his head at the idea that there was any doubt about that.

Robinson was recovering from midseason shoulder surgery a year ago that affected his performance well into Big Ten play. He pointed to the last three games — when he posted 11 tackles and five pass breakups on some of his highest snap totals — as a glimpse of what he can do now on a full court.

“He’s a really nice guy off the field,” Gifford said. “Then we’re out there playing nine-a-side or something and he turns into a mean little guy.”

The man with 47 career games (34 starts) to his name still can’t believe how much time has passed as a rushing end. The suburban Phoenix native was a signing in December 2018 after former coach Scott Frost and his entire staff made a home visit late in the process. The four-star recruit chose the Huskers over Oregon and Nick Saban’s Alabama based on trust — his late father, Jason, and two uncles all played basketball at Chadron State, while his mother, the former Tresha Hill, is an O’Neill native.

Robinson learned under former NU D-linemen, calling himself a “hodgepodge” of old teammates like Khalil and Carlos Davis, Darrion and Damion Daniels, Ben Stille and Casey Rogers. His current lineup includes Hutmacher, Jimari Butler and Elijah Jeudy, with a host of underclassmen linemen watching his every day.

“Now I’m an older guy,” Robinson said. “I’m the old man of the room and an old man of the team. A bunch of guys, I think they respect me enough to listen to the rules. I don’t have to say much.”

Six years in college? The nutrition and health and health sciences major — graduating in May 2023 — never would have guessed. He’s the guy who lies down at the end of the day and puts on a show instead of playing video games or going out. If football hadn’t worked out, he might have tried rodeo work wrestling bull.

He has a name-image-likeness deal with a local boiler-promotion company, with a TV commercial that aired this fall encouraging fans to “fire” their old ones. He spread a Big Red message around Indianapolis to anyone who would listen.

Robinson said he has no regrets about wearing the ‘N’ for another year. And the best may be yet to come.

“I really found my place,” Robinson said. “I can call Nebraska my home now.”