Nebraska’s Scott Frost admits he was out-coached by Bret Bielema

One of the biggest criticisms that tend to be hurled in the direction of Penn State head coach James Franklin tends to target his in-game decision-making. And, to a degree, that is justifiable on more than one occasion during the course of a full regular season. But one thing Penn state has typically been pretty good at under Franklin and his mixture of coaching staff members over the years is the Nittany Lions have a knack for making some in-game adjustments.

One game into the 2021 college football season, Nebraska head coach Scott Frost admitted he was unable to find a way to do that.

Nebraska stumbled out of the gates of the 2021 season with a Week 0 road loss to Illinois, the latest in a growing list of lows for the once-proud Nebraska football program. As if losing to Illinois was not bad enough, falling behind with a head-to-head tiebreaker loss to the lowly Illini and getting out-coached is quite a way to go down.

Nebraska’s biggest reason for defeat was being unable to adjust to what they were seeing on the field against a program that has won more than four games in a season just once since 2016. Making matters worse, it comes across as though Frost just gave up on what Nebraska was trying to do entirely.

For a coach who is already being placed under heavy scrutiny with an 0-1 start to the season before the calendar even flips to September, admitting you were outfoxed by a division rival is either refreshingly honest or incredibly foolish to admit. Perhaps it is a bit of both. Either way, Frost has a lot of work to do at Nebraska, because it has quickly become an exponentially challenging task just to get to five wins, let alone six wins.

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Penn State will not face Nebraska this season, but the Huskers were among the teams to hand Penn state a loss at the start of their infamous 0-5 start to the 2020 season. At the time, Franklin made the call to go with a different starting quarterback, opting for Will Levis over a struggling Sean Clifford at the time. It was a decision that needed to be made, but the game against the Huskers was yet another game where the Nittany Lions dug too big a hole to climb out of.

Penn State will face Bret Bielema and the Illini though. And Penn State fans may be familiar with the battles against Bielema and the Badgers. Credit to Bielema where it is due, he knew how to take advantage of the rulebook at times, showing he could outcoach Joe Paterno and other coaches around the Big Ten.

We’ll see if James Franklin can avoid getting duped into a battle of wits with Bielema the way Frost did.

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