By T.J. Birkel
I promise, Common Fans, we are pivoting to the future very soon. We’re going to talk all about the 2024 season. We’re going to talk about the promise of Matt Rhule. Here at the Common Fan podcast, we are big believers that the future is bright for Nebraska football. We’re going to be frothing at the mouth by the time the 2024 season rolls around.
But first, we must complete The Reckoning series. This has been a thoroughly engaging, mostly enjoyable, and somewhat therapeutic exercise to undertake. It’s truly remarkable the roller coaster that has been Nebraska football for basically a quarter century. Let’s hope we’re on the cusp of a new era of greatness.
We launched Episode 5 of The Reckoning this week: How in the World Did Scott Frost Not Work at Nebraska? Sportswriters Evan Bland and Brandon Vogel did a fantastic job of helping us look back at the shockingly disappointing Frost era.
We Got Our Guy
I remember thinking all sorts of strange and irrational thoughts when Nebraska hired Scott Frost. I couldn’t believe our luck that the hottest coach on the planet grew up in Nebraska, played at Nebraska, and was coming home to Nebraska to save the program. The only thing that could stop us now would be an act of God. I worried about his well-being when recruiting. How safe are those little planes? I wished he would stop chewing tobacco. We want you to be here for decades, Scott!
The thing I did not worry about, in any way, shape, or form, was whether it was going to work. Frost was coming off a magical two-year run at Central Florida, where he took a team that was 0-12 the year before he arrived and turned them into a free-playing, fun-loving, athletic machine that scored early and often on offense, and produced lots of takeaways and sacks on defense. Now, I wasn’t sure what the ceiling might be. Regular Big 10 championships? Regular college football playoff appearances? Would we be the new Alabama? It didn’t matter. We were going to be back.
No one, and I mean no one, predicted the ineptitude that followed. Not a single winning season. Not even 6-6 and a bowl game. Too many gut-punch, one score losses to count. The longer it went on, the more unbelievable it seemed. How could this be happening? It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
What if the Akron Game Hadn’t Been Canceled?
What if, what if, what if? We talked about so many what-ifs in this episode. It feels like the last 25 years of Nebraska football are full of what-ifs, and we have explored many of them during The Reckoning series.
One in particular that many Husker fans have wondered about is, what if the Akron game hadn’t been canceled? In retrospect, it was such a bizarre occurrence, it starts to make the average Common Fan wonder if Nebraska football truly has been cursed. The stadium was electric for game one of the Frost era. Adrian Martinez comes out to take his first ever snap in a Husker uniform, but before even one play can be run, the teams are called off the field due to lightning. How often are football games canceled due to weather?!?!? Almost never.
We’ve learned not to take anything for granted when it comes to Nebraska football, but let’s pretend the game is played and assume the Huskers win. Instead of starting the Frost era with a close loss to Colorado, the Huskers start 1-0. Does that impact either of the next two games (Colorado and Troy)? After getting first-game jitters out of the way, do they win one or both of those next two, starting 3-0 or 2-1?
We’ll never know. What we know is that they started 0-6. As Evan pointed out during this episode, if they could have started even 2-1, they probably end up in a bowl game in Frost’s first year, which likely would have improved their luck on the recruiting trail, eased some of the pressure in future years, and maybe even helped the team avoid taking on the persona of a snake-bit, hard luck team, which of course would become a defining characteristic of Frost’s teams.
Of course, plenty of other issues would rear their ugly heads, early and often.
Complementary Football, Anyone?
Let’s face it, when we moved to the Big 10, Husker fans scoffed at our new conference, didn’t we? At least a little bit. Slow. Plodding. Even boring.
But what have we encountered during our time in the B1G? Extremely well coached teams. Smart teams. Teams that keep penalties to a minimum, don’t turn the ball over, and win the field position game. We still make fun of some of these teams, and Husker fans forever believe we are superior to them (which, of course, we are). But we have been on the losing end of too many games against many of these programs.
When Frost started, he talked about wanting to combine the old school Husker power approach with the fast-paced, athletic profile of the teams he coached at Oregon and UCF. Imagine the possibilities. A Chip Kelly, Oregon-style offense, but with maulers on the offensive line who could go toe-to-toe with Big 10 defenses. It was music to all Common Fans’ ears.
Frost’s strategy was to have a high flying, explosive offense that could score quickly. He wanted his defense to be full of athletic playmakers who could sack the quarterback, generate turnovers, and get the ball back to the offense as fast as possible. If all went according to plan, the offense would run out to big leads before the other team knew what hit them, and his team would keep the pressure on the entire game.
That never really materialized, on either side of the ball. One could argue the best his team ever looked was in the second half of the 2018 season (his first season!), when they went 4-2 to end the year, almost beat Ohio State, and put up some impressive offensive numbers. But very quickly into 2019 and beyond, the well coached, hard hitting Big 10 defenses adjusted to Frost’s offense. Too often, we would witness the offense going 3-and-out, in drives that lasted less than a minute. The Huskers would have to punt, and the opposing team would hold the ball for six, eight, ten minute drives. Eventually we would be playing from behind, and the formula didn’t work.
Details, Details, Details
Another defining characteristic of the Frost era is the unbelievable amount of close games the Huskers lost. Over the course of four full seasons (2018-2021), plus three games into the 2022 season (after which he was fired), Nebraska lost a jaw-dropping 22 games where the margin of victory was within one score (8 points or less).
For the longest time, I didn’t blame Frost for these losses. If they could just get over the hump, if they could just get one more guy to make a play, then they would start winning these close games and everything would turn around. After a certain point though, it comes back to the head man. Maybe it’s a culture issue, maybe it’s a lack of organization, maybe it’s a lack of focus on details. Maybe it’s all of the above. But it’s more than just dumb luck.
After Frost was fired, longtime radio host (and friend of the Common Fan Podcast) Mike’l Severe gave an interview during which he cited stories of Frost being late to practice every day; Frost not making recruiting calls; and assistant coaches going straight to the athletic director to complain about the way things were being handled.
Clearly there were issues behind the scenes. Frost was still young, and early in his tenure as a head coach. He could have used more help from athletic director Bill Moos, who operated in a hands-off manner (and oddly spent large quantities of time outside the State of Nebraska while AD) once Frost was hired.
I do believe Frost felt immense pressure to get it right, for his alma mater and for the entire state of Nebraska. Perhaps, after it wasn’t working over a period of several years, the pressure began to cave in on him. We’ll probably never know the full story. What we do know is that, by the time he was fired early in the 2022 season, there were very few Husker fans that disagreed with the decision.
Turning the Page
Interestingly, after our last episode of The Reckoning focused on Mike Riley’s tenure, many Husker fans responded on YouTube and social media that Frost was in fact the biggest miss of the post-Osborne era, not Riley. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that fans feel that way, but it still feels shocking to me that Scott Frost as a head coach did not work at Nebraska.
Thankfully, we are just over a month from a new football season and, hopefully, a new era of winning for Nebraska football. On that note, make sure to stay tuned for Episode 6 of The Reckoning: The Promise of Matt Rhule. We have lots to look forward to, Husker Nation. It’s time to start acting like the Nebraska of old as we support Coach Rhule in building something new.
We’d love to hear your contribution to this discussion, fellow Common Fans. Send us an email at [email protected], comment on YouTube, or message us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
And in the meantime, GBR for LIFE.
NOTE: Thanks so much to special guest Brandon Vogel from the Counter Read, who joined us for all of The Reckoning episodes. For each episode, we also had a featured guest: someone from the Nebraska sports media who covered the era being examined. Episodes will be released every Monday for six weeks, starting June 17.