After reading through this subreddit, Facebook, Twitter, and general conversation amongst friends - there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on why we are still performing so poorly.
I’m hesitant to blame this all on Frost, because I frankly don’t know who else would turn this program around. It’s also hard to ignore the fact that we have the talent but cannot seem to execute.
I was all on the Luke train but after this week it’s hard to stand behind him.
Is this a coaching problem, talent problem, or something else? What do y’all think is going on here?
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It is absolutely a coaching problem. Year 3 should be the year things come together, especially with the amount of talent the program has been able to bring in. Instead, the team continues to regress. Frost and Co need to pick it up fast.
The problem here is really down to having zilch at the QB position. The play calls had guys wide open today.
Verdu has to be gone at the end of the year, but it raises a bigger question about Frost's judgement because he's been seeing this dude coach QB's at
OregonNorthern Iowa, UCF, and now here.He wasn't at Oregon.
Good catch. It was Northern Iowa where they met?
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They arent talking about frost... verduzco
His QBs were good at UCF and NI
The first recruiting class was so rushed, he only had a couple months so I’m not really sure I count it and say he’s had a full recruiting cycle. Still very young. A lot of coaches downfalls is they’ll stay loyal to their assistants for too long, Frost has gotta start thinking about a new D coordinator, new QB coach and possibly even stepping down as the play caller.
The D didn’t give the ball away 5 times
Honestly, the defense in the 2nd half wasn't anything amazing, but I really don't think the defense has been the biggest issue this year.
Against OSU is a wash, giving up 52 to them isn't a huge deal when they've got a bunch of NFL talent on their offense. They held NW to 21 which is a solid performance, not anything incredible but by no means bad. We don't beat PSU if the defense doesn't show up, they had two clutch red zone stops, even if they looked a bit shaky at times.
Today, the 2nd half wasn't very good, but I feel like part of the problem in the 1st half was that the defense was just on the field so much. When the offense is either going 3-and-out or barely on the field, they defense isn't getting much rest and were getting exposed as a result.
There's some dumb stuff, like that facemask on a sack on 2nd and long around their own 30 that ended up being a drive which they scored on, where no facemask means it's now 3rd and long deep in Illinois' own territory, but as a whole I don't think the defensive performance was as bad as the score makes it out to be.
The defense has been on the field the entire season. Going tempo and failing screws our defense. We are getting what we deserve for our shitty offense.
That fake punt was just killer. Impressed the D held IL to a FG on that one. After that happened I knew we were hosed and weren’t winning that game.
Garrett Nelson is an absolute waste of space. I’m sorry if that opinion pisses people off, but time and time again, I see him in position to make a tfl, and it’s like his feet are in concrete. Twice yesterday and at least twice last week. That’s 4 drives that are not going to have a 3rd and 1. It’s like his feet are planted in concrete. I don’t think he has D-1 instincts or quickness. I just don’t see how he is starting? Dude is a redshirt freshman? Most top programs have juniors and seniors playing that linebacker position. That’s the first change they can make to be a better team. Let him play special teams and develop the quickness (if that’s possible). At this point, I’d rather live with the mistakes that Nick Henrich will almost certainly make (and I believe he is the one that gave up the long play against PSU with over pursuit). But, he’s way more talented. Also, if he is inside, we need to move someone to OLB (other than JoJo) to make plays. I just don’t get it. Wisconsin routinely recruits low 3 star players to play it and they put people in the nfl year after year. Let me know if you ever see redshirt freshman playing OLB on that D.
To be fair, 2 of those were on 4th down - so didn't matter too much. But 3 times is too many.
Sure, but he got the QB he wanted in his first in A-Mart and sure hasn't developed. Rushed class or not you gotta develop the players you get and they haven't developed.
The old idiom is you are either the reason it’s happening or allowing it to happen, either way it’s on Frost.
Leadership is always the problem.
- Jocko
8/11 freshman on the field against penn state doesn’t mean things are coming together. That is the tip of the iceberg of the rebuild. You have to give it more time plain and simple
Why are freshman the receivers on the field in year 3?
Because this staff recruits players and then drives them out of the program. Great staffs don't have our levels of attrition year after year.
That's been a staple ever since the Pelini era though. Do you remember the sheer amount of D-Line transfers and retirements? Especially after Suh.
Is the gap in talent from an awful mike Riley era something that needs explained? You can’t just come into a new program that’s in the gutter and recruit 5 star stud WRs
Where are the 4 star wide receivers from his first two recruiting classes?
14 transfers this offseason?
When I delivered food, some people would take the 30-45 minutes estimate as if it was written on stone tablets delivered by Moses and demand a refund if it was delivered at 56 minutes.
I can assure you that Chryst or Fitzgerald or Ferentz or Allen wouldn't be struggling to get bowl eligible with the recent rosters we've had
I forget, whose responsibility is it to get us our roster?
Even tho Ferentz just hit 100 wins in the B1G 10 which puts him in a spot behind some notable names, I still don’t see him turning this dumpster fire around. And I forgot to add Iowa .
I’m starting to question SF for the first time, but simply yelling “FIRE HIM” is purely emotional. Ask yourself: 1) who would we hire? 2)would a firing set things farther back? 3) if the next coach inherits this mess, do we only give home three years before we fire him?
We are all upset, but the answer is not an easy one.
I hate that god damn “who would you hire” question. There are plenty of other guys out there who could do the job just as well if not better then Frost. Believe it or not people it doesn’t have to be a hometown hero. We can hire someone from the Dabo coaching tree or something idk but there are so many options out there. Not saying Frost needs to get fired FYI.
Agreed. It makes no sense to me. Frost is not Urban Meyer, he had one good season. Gene Chizik had a good season too, turns out he still was a bad coach. I don't think we should fire Frost yet either, but I see this sentiment and it genuinely confuses me.
Speaking of urban Meyer 😍 god husker fans would lose their minds (in a bad way) if they hired him ever. Because he wouldn’t do it the “husker way” whatever the fuck that means.
I wouldn't mind urban as a head coach. I just highly doubt he would do it. He would go to Michigan before nebraska.
If we hired Urban Meyer, only a fool wouldn't be excited.
At this point, I wouldn't care if we started wearing burnt orange and replaced Herbie with a longhorn steer if it led to some god damn wins.
Yup, entirely possible that frost caught lightning in a bottle by lucking out with a bad ass quarterback and landed a big boy job just a bit too early. Wouldn’t be the first, won’t be the last.
also entirely possible we caught lightning in a bottle for 50 years and this is how it always should've been
Chizik won a national championship. I will take Chizik over a coach with what will probably end up being 3 losing seasons in a row
So did Frost! /s
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Name your options, and realistically assess whether they’d take this job if we fired a home grown guy who was very successful every single other place he’s been after three years.
Man idk any coaches I’m not a hiring guru. I’m just saying there ARE options out there. Its not gonna be Frost or bust never was gonna be that.
This is a dumb take. Stability is what builds champions. Rebooting your program every 4 years is terrible for every aspect of a successful football team.
But you also don't want to hire a coach that treats Nebraska as a stepping stone to his dream job. Because then we're having to replace a coach every 3 or 4 years because the good one went elsewhere.
People don't like to think that almost every coaching hire is a crapshoot. There are what 5 coaches in CFB who are guaranteed home runs? Everything else is a roll of the dice you can get the G5 and it might be a hit like Mark Dantonio or Brian Kelley or it could be a miss like Butch Jones and Jim McElwain. A hotshot coordinator could be a hit like Dan Mullen or Kirby Smart or a miss like Will Muschamp and Jeremy Pruitt. The narrative of Scott Frost was so fantastic that we all convinced ourselves he was one of the 5 surefire homeruns when he was really just another spin of the wheel.
I think the question comes up because of the way we’ve run things in the past. We’ve fired 9 game winners multiple times. The media picks up the narrative of “it’s never good enough for Nebraska fans stuck in the past” and right or wrong, candidates pick up on this.
Especially for $5 million per year. These people need to get real, that type of money gets big names.
I don’t think you’ve seen what other coaches are making?
We should hire Bryan Harsin from Boise State. He's a proven winner and likely sees the writing on the wall that he and Boise State will never play for an NC. He can definitely go to an NC at UNL though.
I’d be hesitant hiring someone from Boise. Rebuilding a program is a very different task from sustaining one of the most consistently successful programs in the country.
The fact that we’ve only given our past two head coaches three years says a lot. If we fire frost it shows other coaches that they will always have a very short leash and they’re fucked if they don’t figure it out super quick
You think a top tier coach wants to join that culture. NO WAY
Exactly
At the very least, there’s a huge problem with penalties, they don’t seem particularly disciplined with all the players who supposedly don’t know the playbook and stuff, they don’t play particularly fundamentally sound, there seems to be a lack of any real development, and play calling is extremely questionable which is all on the coaches.
It's been like that for the past 10 years, too. I truly don't understand what's going on. I hate that I'm starting to get worn out and apathetic but I'm just so tired of watching uninspired football
Me too, and a lot of these problems have stuck around through multiple tenures so it’s not like it’s only on Frost.
All that being said, it’s hard to play call when your players are all under class men and anywhere else would be riding the bench until they got more experience.
I can’t agree more with the fundamentals part of your comment. If we had the discipline Northwestern showed tonight against Wisky, I wonder how different our records would be under Frost.
Offense is king in college football and we don't have a quarterback that performs. It's that simple.
Verduzco on the block
We have no offensive identity or go-to plays other than “fast”.
We have an offensive identity, it’s just not good. The defense could legit just guess designed QB run and they’d be right 1/3rd of the time.
The offensive identity is throwing 6-8yd passes to our tight end and qb runs
How many years are left on his contract? How about just letting that run its course?
Didn't they extend it to like 7 years or something? Yikes
They extended Riley too, at some point we gotta look above Frost
Yeah I don't know what Moos was thinking. Probably gave him an extension while he was drinking at lunch or something.
I agree. We all like Frost. We know he's had success. Things suck right now, but Moos hired him and gave him a healthy contract. We need to see it through. I hate when our team loses, and I'm sure the staff hates it even more.
It’s not even that we lose. It’s the manner in which we lose. It’s fucking maddening.
Yeah, that is maddening.
We haven’t had a coach since Tom who has been part of building a program before. Look at all of the successful teams out there, all have either been part of the building process somewhere or had coaches around them who were. Callahan was successful if it wouldn’t have been for their god awful defenses.
Bo brought in buddies Reily was never truly successful anywhere Scott is tiring into Bo 2.0, we need to surround him with quality. I said earlier in another thread we need to bring in someone like Urban who can be a Analyst/GM to help build this the right way using what I believe is the same offense Scott wants to run.
If Callahan would have been willing to fire cosgrove, he probably would have been here until he decided to leave.
100% agree
Our Offense was top 10 in the country in 07 with recruits built to play in the complete wrong system. We had consistent NFL draft picks on the O line. If Cosgrove had taken the Vikings job in 06 Callahan would still be coaching here.
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Let me qualify that, 2.0 on his hires. Let’s be honest though, Bo was at his best with Callahan recruits.
It's not gonna get better IMO. Scott has been unable to do the things necessary to get it going so we're gonna have to sit in him a couple more years and hope we can do better next time with a coaching hire. In order for Scott to fix this team, he would have to our his ego aside and realize that he's paying his friends way too much money for such a shitty job. Yet, he will fall on the sword before letting go of said friends. I think he genuinely believes he has good coaches around him and that is just not the case. I think he also thinks he's a way better play caller than he actually is.
Scott's ego will be his downfall.
Nothing so far has confirmed he's more loyal to his friends than his school. We'll find out after this season though unless things shape up in a big way.
His friends are shit coaches and his ego won't let him admit it. Even when he's had a chance to hire someone else, he chooses a friend. Like Lubick.
Renfah is angry and likely drinking so you gotta wait for sober takes.
He already fired an offensive coordinator lol. This team clearly has problems, but blaming all of it on the assistant coaches seems dumb
We don’t have an OC - Frost is the OC - again part of the problem
Walters didn't get fired. It was a 'mutual seperation'.
So a nicer way of saying he got fired. I don’t think it was his choice to leave an offensive coordinator job to be an assistant wide receivers coach
So then why hire Lubick? A guy that wasn't even an active coach. Maybe bc they're friends and have history? As if that will lead to success on the football field. Hire doesn't make much sense.
The first game of the frost era, vs Colorado at home. The offense slinged the ball all over the field (Adrian went 15/20 with 200 yds) and ran all over the defense while Adrian and Greg bell had over 100 yds rushing. Since then the offense has never been the same.
I went to the following Colorado game. Never again. And then the Ohio home game after that.
Sorry. Personal opinion.... at this pace, positive season comes in 2029
Edit: and for the love of god, if you want to downvote it’s, show a Nebraska Spine and comment why you think otherwise.
I went to Boulder last year too. That was a brutal walk back to the car.
Just a reminder that Colorado was garbage that year, as well as 2019. 2018 started 5-0 and then dropped their last 7 and fired their coach.
We were also a better team as a whole in 2018. Lots of close losses and almost knocked of OSU
I posted this earlier and I stand by it.
•Fire Verduzco
•Fire Austin
•Keep Lubick at Offensive Coordinator, relieve him of WR duty so he can put more emphasis on playbook
•Hire Keith Williams at WR
BRING WIDEOUTS BACK. JUST ADD A SOBER CAB TO HIS CONTRACT
Is he still living in Lincoln?
He is and he’s still a Mecca for NFL wideouts who want to improve their footwork.
He’s either living in Lincoln or Omaha
I’ve been on the hire Williams train and I’ll continue to stay on it. I’m fairly confident that Martinez looked good his first year bc the wide outs were that well trained by Williams.
But Verduzco is so quirky! /s
Donte Williams and Keith Williams never should have been let go when Frost was hired on. Then again, I think our situation is a lesson to all AD's that you don't let your new, relatively unproven, coach just take their entire staff from their old school to the new school.
How much is it Verduzco being a problem, and how much is it that Nebraska hasn't recruited an above average passer in over a decade?
You would think that one of the 4 star recruits dropping dimes in highschool would be able to translate that over to Nebraska. It'