Jeremy

Yep. One more slight difference if I might: Back in those days, fans would be streaming out by mid-3rd quarter, but that didn't happen last night. That's good to see.

To everyone saying it's just a 'wrinkle': bullcrap. First of all, Frost has been calling read options since the first play against cu in '18. And we've ran the crap out of that and variations of it. That's option football. 2nd, even outside of the orbit-motion triple option look, nearly every handoff had a read tag, which is option football. It's not just a wrinkle. With a guy like Martinez taking snaps; Yant, Stepp, Johnson in the picture, it would be crazy not to run option plays.

I knew Northwestern was down, but holy cow. It also didn't help that they were throwing the ball so much to stop the clock. Good on Scott for calling off the dogs early, brought back some of those old Osborne days feelings. More option, please. Michigan is obviously a tough squad. But we HAVE to beat Purdue, Minnesota, and FINALLY get the Wisconsin monkey off our back. Then give iowa everything we got. We NEED a bowl game. Post-season practices, post-season exposure, fan excitement, momentum going into next year. Scott seems to be coaching for his football life, and that's good, because if this program is EVER going to get back at all, it's gotta start pretty soon.

No matter what, I HAVE to watch them. Been in my blood since as long as I can remember. Used to be because they'd be on TV what, 2, maybe 3 times a year? It was a real treat to actually see the guys in red that we'd only hear about on the radio week after week. With age, of course, things change, and they're on one channel or another every week. Part of it, after coaching football for more than a decade, is to see what fundamentals we're showing or lacking, especially on the offensive line. You other coaches probably know exactly what I'm talking about. If we had someone showing these enormous kids how to block - effective ways, I think we'd be 4-1 or better. Just SO much standing straight up, not driving feet, head down, losing their stance, poor foot width, etc; it's just disgusting that nobody making so much money on that staff is showing them effective ways to do things. I watch to see these things, the overall scheme, to see if we're doing stupid things like giving the ball to Brody Belt inside the 10 instead of Stepp or Yant. To catch those beautiful glimpses of triple option the Frost likes to tease us with. I watch to build up hope as we lead by 7 with less than 4 minutes to play. To think that maybe we have a chance in overtime. To watch it all die. But I'll keep watching. Better days ahead.

I sincerely hope you're right, but can you give any specific evidence showing the signs that Frost is really turning the program around? We're staring down the barrel of another 4-win season, which is no change from '18.

Honestly, there are some guys that could do WAY better than what we see now, at least with offense and special teams.

Failing to make postseason play 4 years in a row? At Nebraska? I don't know, it just seems like it's never going to come together for this staff.

Give me Monken, Calhoun, maybe Chadwell. Bring a REAL running game back to Lincoln. Frost is going to lose Alante Brown, one of the better athletes we have, because he wants Falck and Belt out there. What the HECK Scott? Do you seriously not get this? We WANTED him to turn it around. But it's not going to happen. Sitting at home during bowl season AGAIN. 5 million dollars.

Our defense is WAY better now than it was then. Offense is dink and dunk at best. Never thought that would happen with a Frost-led team.

Flash in the pan, backyard crap is never going to work in Lincoln. Of all people, I would expect Frost to get that. But he doesn't. 5 years, no postseason. It's just sad. I don't think he's gonna work out. Get a guy that knows how to coach a simple, solid, running and play-action game. We win games with fundamentals, beating the guy across from you, not fancy dancy stuff. If we're going to hand it off near their 10, give it to Stepp or Yant, not Brody flipping Belt? Maybe take a few shots deep in the last 35 seconds? I see other teams do it all the time, but we can't? In overtime, you can't expect Martinez to read the field. He just. Can't. Do it. How can we see these things, but the guy making 5 million a year not? Frost's record is not an accident. He's just not the guy.

All very true. I would add that this offense just asks too much of him. 40 different formations, motions, protection schemes, before the ball is even snapped. Then he has to execute the play, which normally has several different reads in succession, and defenders running free through our young, porous line. I seriously doubt even Mariota or Milton could hack it in Lincoln right now. I once heard an old, very successful HS football coach say that he ran at most, 8 plays, because 'even though most boys like the game, the average thought in their heads is about 3 things, and none of those thoughts have anything to do with football.' This goes for college athletes, too, to some extent. He has classes, grades, a girlfriend, social life, etc. I dislike Iowa very much, but Ferentz has a formula he's stuck to for more than 2 decades now: simple plays, simple reads. Focus on fundamentals, defense, special teams. Petras gets an easy snap under center, quick and efficient (most of the time), turns around, hands off/fakes the hand off, boots. Simple, predictable, but effective. On the boots/waggles, he has 2, maybe 3 easy reads, and if they aren't there, he can scramble or throw the ball away. It isn't flashy or super exciting, and once again, I DON'T want to be Iowa, but who's ranked 5th in the country, and who isn't?

Schiano? HECK no. I'm still on the Monken train. Just LOOK at this: Ain't it just beautiful? We struggle to get people open. Army had guys open all over the place. On the TD pass, there were TWO guys, without anyone within 20 yards, at least. But I dream...

That's what I remember. Maybe just rumors? I also remember reading that Spurrier was pushing hard for Frost, trying to get Stricklin to out-bid what Moos was offering. I remember thinking how GREAT it would be to beat the Ol' Ball Coach one more time. And we did. Life was great in December of '17. Getting Frost felt like winning a bowl game, even though the actual team was MILES away from bowl eligibility. Reading this makes me want Frost to turn it all around. Even to give him more time. Make some changes in the coaching staff, and give the VERY young offensive line a couple more years in the offense to mature, maybe become the West Division leader, who knows.

Slightly off-topic, but, watch this. All respect to this kid, but most of the plays, no one even TRIES to block him. I don't know if it's the scheme, Greg Austin, or what, but this is an enormous failure for a blue-blood, national brand program like ours. In what world of college football does your offensive scheme not account for the middle linebacker, possibly the best player on their team? Starting to lose faith in Frost. I want to believe, but what the HECK?

We don't want him. Well, I don't.

I think there are definitely some called gives, though. Several times, if AM was actually making a read, he should have pulled it (on regular read option). Also, no bad snaps, right? Way to go, Jurgy!

I was at the game. I'm happy we got the win, but our line didn't get to the 2nd level much at all. Greenhagan met Stepp over and over in the hole.

Not Greenhagen

That isn't nearly good enough. A Mike backer from FCS Fordham should never be unblocked. It's either poor scheme, poor coaching, or both.

You'd think after his 5th tackle, unblocked, a coach, ANY coach would have assigned someone to block him. Like once.

Agreed 100%. In O'Brien, I see Callahan 2.0. No thanks. Malzahn pulled out a tough win over Boise St. last night, but the problem is it looks like his offense would need a great quarterback, and I don't see us out-recruiting Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Minnesota, or even Iowa State now for those kinds of kids. A Monken or Calhoun would really interesting because we would be unique, tough to prepare for, and we wouldn't be recruiting against conference opponents for the same kinds of players, at least on offense. Chadwell's stuff would be fun to see in Lincoln.

And the thing is, Osborne wasn't always a lifeless statue on the sideline. In the early years, even into the early 80's, you could find him in a ref's ear from time to time. Did he carry on very long? No, but he would let the zebras know if he appreciated their officiating or not pretty clearly. There's audio of the last game he coached - vs Tennessee, and he was letting the defense have it. 'Don't let them run the ball down your throats!' We were up by 30 or whatever, but he wasn't happy with the yards we were giving up.

Eh. Just sabre rattling. I've read some pretty damning stuff about Fleck and how he treats his players behind closed doors. So he makes his players hand the ball to the refs. Big deal. They still fumble. Your players will trust you if you know what you're doing, period.

If Trev can't get a Malzahn, Chadwell, or Campbell, yes. We gotta get the next one right.

This is true, normally, but it's not like things JUST started going wrong. Frost is 12-21. There's not getting around that, and A LOT of things have gone wrong to get a record like that. It's just inexcusable at this point. I like Frost as much as anyone and I want him to succeed, but right now it's not looking like that will happen. Why in the HECK would a guy earning 5 mil a year to rebuild a football program spend ANY time at any bar or anything like that. I think I speak for everyone here when I say that while we are all youth sports coaching legends, if we were in Frost's position, you'd have to DRAG us out of the film room when we weren't on a plane 'crootin. You'd NEVER find us (well, most of us) down at G25 for ANY reason. Recruiting is difficult in Lincoln, but they've managed to get big linemen and some quick skill guys. That's great. The problem is that we're not going to UCF our way past B1G defensive schemes, fundamentals and coordinators. We used to make fun of the B1G back in the day because everything seemed so boring and vanilla. Turns out, it's because the B1G is a solid conference with good defensive fundamentals.