Broad Look at Scott’s Coaching Career

r/CFB was discussing how to view Scott’s Nebraska by saying it was never close to a good hire, but rather always a flop. There was a lot of praise for the team he inherited at UCF, having gone 12-1 with a lone 3 point loss to eventual #4 SCar within two years of going 0-12.

I saw this and just had to look at who Scott is, how he’s worked his job, and why there’s such a disparity from Orlando to Lincoln.

And in fact, if we are inclined to give George O’Leary respect enough to hype his 2013 team and attribute Scott’s UCF success to that “better baseline of talent,” then it’s reasonable to have real talk about the destructive slide that Mike Riley was on, especially in 2017 [when we had 5 blowout losses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Nebraska_Cornhuskers_football_team#Schedule) (but still beat Illinois and Purdue, lol..).

Scott clearly bit off more than he could chew, especially when you throw in higher pressure, greater stakes, and (significantly) better competition. With Milton being another clear reason for Scott’s (and even Heupel’s) success, the decision to always play Adrian was also a huge reason for failure. QB Play is a huge factor, along with several other key aspects of the overall job he inherited.

UCF was definitely a cut above the rest of their conference in talent if nothing else, long before Scott got there. The 0-12 season was a result of imploding worse than just about any program had ever seen, while retaining significant talent. Put in Milton with the best talent in the conference at the time, and coaching a scheme that fit makes 13-0 make sense.
While at Nebraska we were on a long, downward slope, with plenty enough “talent” to theoretically beat most division and conference foes… but seldom track record of doing so. When he took the job, he took a completely different team than he expected/was used to, and didn’t know how to make the most of it. He’s a maximizer of existing processes, not a master developer of new ones. That much is glaringly obvious at this point.
And that’s okay. In fact, that’s why he’s always leaned so heavily on “Osborne-isms” whenever he speaks in front of an audience.

“Day by day, we get better and better,” emphasizing the walk-on program, competing against a nameless/faceless opponent so your competitive focus becomes on yourself… All of these principles *do work*, but are inherently slow. Flashy isn’t the MO, and I ‘d say Scott’s doing a fairly decent job of instilling these values when you listen to his players speak the same words. I’d say compared to the 90’s, it feels like we’re at 90+% of students bought in with only ~30% truly implementing it. Shout out to JoJo Domann in particular, as we are all heartbroken by his college career-ending hand injury. The key is to actively bridge this gap of philosophy and technique by *actually teaching the technique* in a way that is akin to the coaching of Sean Beckton.

Another thing worth mentioning is how Scott has honestly made fools of all of us by implying that he’d win a lot before ever fielded a team. Coupled with “humble” (read: foreboding) comments like “we’re not going to win every single game at Nebraska,” other comments about adapting to his offense didn’t sit well with the other coaches in our division because none of the other 3 new coaches at the time ever spoke like that. He had a target on his back the whole time.
We’ve all loved to shit on the woes of Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue Illinois and Iowa (can’t even attempt to throw shade on Wisconsin since we joined in 2011 lol), but basically each of them have beat highly ranked OSUs, MSUs, PSUs, and UMs over the years since we joined the conference. We can’t ignore the fact that our yearly competition shows up ***way better*** than ol’ “nameless and faceless” during a week of practice.
We probably do have amazing practices each week, but with only 30% of the discipline and focus we need to make the needed progress on the timeline that would please our fanbase. Close that gap between philosophy and technique (i.e. *be better coaches*), and we’re nothing short of a perennial 10-win team.

So I say, as someone who has fully developed my Stockholm’s Syndrome by writing this all out for you, I didn’t care if he was kept or fired, but now that it’s decided he stays, my low bar is 6 wins next year, with with optimism for 8 or 9 after a bowl.
Anway, instead of Team No Hype for this next year, I’m Team MayHype

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