Grading Scott Frost’s first season as coach at Nebraska
Now that it’s over, here’s how Scott Frost’s first season as coach at Nebraska grades out.
After Mike Riley’s mediocre tenure, hope and hype came to Nebraska Cornhuskers football with Scott Frost taking over as head coach. The Lincoln native and national championship Cornhuskers quarterback came back home off an undefeated season as head coach at UCF, and had been a candidate for other job openings.
Simply making a bowl game would have sufficed this year for Nebraska in Frost’s first year, but that won’t be happening with a 4-8 record after Friday’s season-closing loss to Iowa. An 0-5 start put the Cornhuskers behind the eight-ball, after their season opener against Akron was cancelled, but progress was shown in the second half of the season and hopes will be high in 2019.
Here’s a look at Nebraska’s first season under Frost, followed by a grade.
The Good
The days of Nebraska’s “Blackshirts” defense are not coming back, at least not yet, but marginal progress was made on that side of the ball this year. After finishing 100th in the country or worse in total defense, scoring defense and against the run in 2017, the Cornhuskers are 95th, 88th and 94th in those categories this year.
Adrian Martinez missed one game due to a leg injury, but the true freshman signal caller was a capable dual threat (2,617 passing yards, 629 rushing yards, 25 total touchdowns) while completing 64.6 percent of his passes (tied for 33rd in the country; fourth in the Big Ten) with a 139.5 passer rating (fourth in the Big Ten).
Frost brought an offensive acumen with him, and it showed this season. Nebraska is top-30 in the country in total offense (26th) and rushing offense (29th) right now, while also sitting 51st in pass offense and 62nd in scoring. In 2017, they finished 84th in the country in scoring offense, 27th in passing offense (with grad transfer Tanner Lee at quarterback), 119th in rushing offense and 87th in total offense.
It’s not saying a lot, but three conference wins in Frost’s first year matches the number of conference wins Nebraska had in two of Riley’s three seasons. Four wins in the final six games, with one-score setbacks to Ohio State (31-26) and Iowa (31-28), brings some momentum looking toward 2019.
The Bad
Nebraska’s 0-6 start this year was the worst in program history, including losses to Michigan (56-10), Purdue (42-28), Wisconsin (41-24) and Northwestern (34-31) to open conference play.
Five of Nebraska’s eight losses game by five points or less, and that kind of inability to win close games is often pointed to as a sign of a bad team. The loss to Ohio State can stand as a moral victory though, as can the three-point loss to eventual Big Ten West champion Northwestern.
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The Big Picture
On a best-case/worst-case scale, a 4-8 record to match Riley’s final season as coach is easy to place on the bad end for this year. But this year’s 4-8 feels a lot different than last year’s, with hope for the future that has not realistically existed in Lincoln for a long time.
So for a final grade, intangible factors beyond the record have to be factored in when reviewing Frost’s first season.