Longtime assistant Ron Brown, young staffers step into coaching roles for Huskers in stretch run | Football

Scott Frost heard a familiar voice on Monday in practice.

Ron Brown is a full-time coach again — an interim one for Nebraska’s final two games, to be clear — and so he’s headlong into working with the Husker running backs.

“I didn’t get to hear him at practice at all before, now I get to hear his voice again and it kind of takes me back,” Frost said Monday of Brown, who’s spent 24 total years as a Husker assistant, including when Frost played here in the 1990s. “I hope I have that much energy when I’m his age. He’s certainly aged well and taken care of himself and brings a lot of energy to everything that he does.”

This, of course, is not the way Nebraska’s fourth-year head coach wanted the fall to go. His team is preparing for its final two games without the four offensive assistants he fired last week on the Huskers’ second bye week.

Now, Frost has four staffers taking over the full-time coaching roles for the final weeks of the season.

Brown, a senior offensive analyst, is coaching running backs. Fellow senior offensive analyst Frank Verducci is coaching the offensive line with off-the-field help from Steve DeMeo. Offensive analyst Mike Cassano is coaching the receivers and Steve Cooper is coaching quarterbacks.

“(Verducci) has been our analyst and he’s done a great job at it,” junior right guard Matt Sichterman said. “Him and (former offensive line coach Greg Austin) kind of work together to make our schemes happen, so they worked pretty closely together. And obviously, I’ve been here a while, I’ve built a good relationship with him.