The Tate Martell Saga Continues

Yesterday marked the nine year anniversary of Martell committing to Washington and he celebrated it by transferring to UNLV.

Tate Martell has been linked to five schools over the past nine years and none of them have hit for the former Gatorade Player of the Year. Yesterday marked the nine year anniversary of Martell committing to Washington as an eighth grader and instead of popping champagne to celebrate, he transferred to UNLV.

Martell grew up in San Diego where he played Pop Warner football. He blew up as a Pop Warner player, so much so that Washington coach Steve Sarkisian got him to commit as a fourteen year old. That’s the first college.

He would go onto play at Poway High School in Poway, California and led them to a 4-7 record. Martell would transfer to national powerhouse Bishop Gorman to takeover for Randal Cunningham II. He started as a sophomore, junior and senior.

Let’s back track just a few steps. He would go onto decommit from Washington and commit to Texas A&M in 2015. This is the second college that Martell is linked to through his wild career.

In May of 2016, Martell would decommit AGAIN, this time from Texas A&M and oh boy did the state of Texas hate that. What really riled up the state of Texas is that Martell committed to Ohio State a month later. This is the third college that Martell would be linked with.

When Martell and Bishop Gorman played against the number one team in Texas, Cedar Hill in 2016, he didn’t get the warmest of welcomes in the Lone Star state. He received waves of boos and was heckled but Martell got the last laugh when Bishop Gorman rolled Cedar Hill 44-14.

While the win was big, Martell took a lot of heat from a tweet that came from his account during the game and one that followed when Martell was on the team bus. All of this can be seen in season one of QB1: Beyond the Lights.

Here’s the tweet.

I mean, I get what he’s saying that Nevada football owns Texas but like it’s not that creative. My one note of advice to Martell would be to be more creative with your clap back tweets.

Martell would later transfer from Bishop Gorman to Desert Pines High School because Bishop Gorman would not let Martell graduate early to attend Ohio State for spring ball.

The California native was set to be the successor of Dwayne Haskins in Columbus but that didn’t seem to work out.

He redshirted the 2017 season to try and prepare for his time to come. In 2018, Martell backed up Haskins but appeared in six games. He threw for 269 yards and 1 touchdown while rushing for 128 yards and 2 touchdowns.

Martell’s time in Columbus came to an end really quick when Justin Fields transferred from Georgia to Ohio State. Martell was less than pleased when this happened and he fired off a tweet that was a clear shot at the former Bulldogs quarterback.

This tweet has since been deleted. Now let’s take little look into the future. Justin Fields was drafted this year in the first round by the Bears and Martell is still in college with two years of eligibility remaining.

Martell began to feel the heat after he was blasted for the since deleted tweet and the fact that Fields is a better quarterback than him. He decided to transfer to Miami. Here is where college number four comes into play.

On a bit of a side note, Fields gave Martell the ultimate fuck you after the tweet. He followed a Martell on Instagram but it was not Tate. He followed his absolute smoke show of a sister Rylee Martell.

Miami was fired up that Martell would be heading south. This transfer was looked at as massive and was thought to be the thing that would revitalize the Hurricanes football program. Miami had no such luck.

Martell underperformed in camp. And when I say that Martell underperformed, it was BAD. The Miami staff was so down on him that they completely took him out of the quarterback race.

The Hurricanes decided that if he was going to be on the team then they needed to do something with him so they bumped number eighteen out to receiver and he recorded no catches for no yards.

The only stat line that the Bishop Gorman alum posted was seven rushing attempts for seven yards. Not what Miami had anticipated at all.

Martell stuck around through the Covid-19 season but knew that when D’Eriq King transferred in from Houston he had no shot at starting. He began plotting on his next move and where he would try to play football again.

Now yesterday, Martell announced that he would use his two final years of eligibility at UNLV. Here is college number five, and I hope it’s the last one. He’ll try to lead the Rebels to a winning record, something they haven’t experienced since 2013.

To put this into perspective, Martell was the second ranked quarterback in his recruiting class behind Tua Tagovailoa. By the time Martell’s eligibility is up, Tagovailoa will have finished his third NFL season. Outrageous.