Frost Facing New Challenges as Huskers in the Midst of a Historically Bad Season

Scott Frost has been with winning programs all his life. It started in his hometown of Wood River. Frost led his team to the state playoffs three out of his four years as the starting quarterback.

In college, Frost continued his successful streak after transferring to Nebraska from Stanford. In 1996, the Huskers went 11-2, defeating Virginia Tech handily in the Orange Bowl. In 1997, Frost led his team to an undefeated season and won the national championship.

As a player, Frost was close to coaching legends everywhere he went. At Stanford, Frost learned under Bill Walsh, well before he even played a game under Tom Osborne. When Frost played with the New York Jets, he had Bill Parcells and Bill Bellichick as coaches.

At Oregon, Frost started as a wide receivers coach, before moving up to become offensive coordinator of Chip Kelly’s juggernaut Oregon teams.

After the game, Frost quoted another titan of coaching, Vince Lombardi. “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is Losing,” Frost said. Frost acknowledged after the game that youth and inexperience is costing the team in many areas.

“We got a young team at certain places,” Frost said. “Some of the mistakes are by the young guys.”

This team has a lot to learn of course, but Frost is going through a learning curve of his own – managing the hardship of being the head ball coach of Nebraska’s least successful team in the Husker’s 129 year history.

“Some of the things that are happening to us this year, I haven’t ever really seen before,” Frost said. “It’s hard for me to anticipate them and fix them.”

Frost has taken a team from the depths of despair before. Most Husker fans are familiar with the story. Right before Frost arrived at UCF, the Golden Knights went winless in their 2015 season. Two years later, UCF went undefeated and beat Auburn in the Orange Bowl.

But a team that consistently shoots themselves in the foot, making the same mistakes week to week? That’s something else entirely. It appears sometimes as if Nebraska is suffering from some type of ancient curse, unable to break the spell that prevents them from winning.

“I’m kind of running out of words to tell them, other than just stick together,” Frost said. It’ll take more than words to break out of this funk. Frost will get it right but learning to win isn’t a one way street.