So I'm finally breaking the seal after not sure how many years. I've been lurking since the Pelini days finally paid awhile back and regularly visit the site but have yet to post. So hello everyone and here is what I have come up with:
I have followed the Huskers since the early 80's and have seen the good teams, the great teams, the average teams and the bad teams. I'm a numbers guy and always look there first for answers.
The Frost era has been the complete opposite of what my expectations were from W-L, offensive prowess, strength and conditioning, and recruiting. My guess is that is the majority of what people are thinking so what gives?
For me, the starting place of any team is don't beat yourself and don't be easy to beat. I think that Frost coming from the PAC 12 and AAC got comfortable with being able to live with and recover from errors. The B1G and the B1G-west in particular is filled with teams that prey on mistakes. Iowa, Wisconsin, and Northwestern will never out athlete you and depend on winning the small battles to win the game. Unfortunately Frost's teams play right into their hands.
In Frost's tenure, NU is 1-12 when we have lost the turn over battle. They are 7-2 when they win the turnover battle and 2-5 when turn overs are even. This is football 101 and hard to believe that a TO player would have numbers like this. Again, I think that in the PAC and AAC this isn't as big of a deal because the other teams will likely give you presents right back whereas B1G wait for these opportunities and then hammer you.
The second number that is striking is the third down battle. Frost teams are PATHETIC on 3rd down %. NU has only won the third down conversion battle in 8 of his 27 games (29.6%). This year is particularly bad as NU is converting 32% of their third downs while our opponents are converting at a 49.4% rate. There are a lot of things that go into conversion rate but I feel the biggest one is unforced errors. While watching Frost's teams I have found myself expecting at least one negative play on every drive. This could be a penalty, bad snap, fumble. I would love to know the percentage of clean dives we have and then what our scoring rate is on those drives. I was surprised to see that NU is about even in the penalty battle. I would have guessed us to be much worse than our opponents. This year we are 0-5 in the penalty battle meaning we have had more penalties than our opponent in every game. Over Frost's tenure they are 12-15-2 in the penalty battle. The acceptance of bad snaps is mind boggling as they are worse than a penalty. Not only do you lose yards but the down as well. Any bad snap means that the offense only gets two downs to go 13+ yards.
The third problem I see is Frost's lack of game management experience. He has been a head coach for two years in the AAC and not played in a lot of closely contested games where small decisions can be the difference between winning and losing. He is 4-11 in one possession games. If he just flipped that number and went 11-4 in those games, his record goes from 10-19 to 17-12 and likely has two bowl games under his belt to boot.
What this leads me to is that there is hope that this can get quite a bit better with some simple fixes. We all know the problems that the program had when Frost came in. As
@ShortSideOption continues to point out, those excuses don't work anymore. The meddling administration is gone and most all of the players as well.
The lack of discipline and smart football is on Frost and the staff. My opinion is that their system of not immediately correcting mistakes in practice is a big factor in large amounts of unforced errors his teams have. I also think that players are not being held accountable for makings errors, specifically snaps but really it is a team discipline problem. Watching the 90's teams lean on opponents until they broke makes it hard to watch this version of the Huskers. I have gotten to the point where I expect a penalty, a turnover, or broken play every series and I am correct more often than not. Scott needs to take a step back from trying to outsmart everyone and get his team to play clean football. That has to be step one.
I bought the strength and conditioning hook, line, and sinker when they came and was expecting to see chiseled athletes by this time. It's sad when Illinois looks far more athletic than we do. I think most people would agree that we have taken the explosiveness out of almost everyone on the team in the name of bulk. I think some fundamental changes need to made here especially given
@ShortSideOption saying we have put far more time in the weight room this year than most every team. We should be able to see that difference but have yet to in any game we have played.
The third area that Scott has done a poor job of is roster management. This one is hard to say what is right and what is wrong and trying to make a transition will always be tough. I think he was a bit overconfident in being able to coach UCF and run Nebraska at the same time. I don't blame him for what he did and completely respect and agree with how he tried to do it. Given hindsight it did put him in a hole from start. It would be very hard to pull the trigger and just play the young guys especially when coming off and undefeated season knowing that you are going to look bad at times and lose some games that you could probably win using older players. The temptation is there that you can make it work but it really is hard on everyone, espcially given today's players mentality, to get buy in and kids wanting to make the switch. Also trying to get a different style of athlete without having a proven track record and established name is very challenging which means you have to take more risks. It is now obvious that too much risk was taken and I think the staff has learned that lesson. Once we are stable and can show a good product with results, we can get in on "better" recruits that are stable.
I think Scott is a smart coach and has the will to win that will drive him to figure this out. I don't believe Nebraska has any other options than to play this out long term. We have basically started over every year for I don't know how many years and need to suck it up and stop the death spiral. I believe the defense has performed better than expected and really has tended very well this year in particular. They have their moments but really think they are ahead of the offense and special teams at this point. I would not change any of the coaches and give players a consistent message from day one. This alone will help with mental aspect of the game and mistakes being made. I think that the effect of even small changes gets underestimated. The only place I would look at significant changes is in strength and conditioning.
Hopefully my post can bring some hope to a product that really looks to be hopeless at times. We have to learn to crawl before we learn to run. The team looks so much different when we don't beat ourselves. We are a +.500 team if we just do that. The rest will come once we gain confidence in what we are doing.
There's about 8 years of posts wrapped up into one, I'll see you all in 2028
