CBS Sports: It's clear Nebraska is poised for quick success with Scott Frost

[Mavric]

I keep hearing that year after year, but is Northwestern that "tough of a team".  Hear me out.  Northwestern has had good records and has beaten NU a number of times since NU has joined the Big Ten.  But, I think those Nebraska losses were more due to coaching incompetence and mistakes.  Northwestern is not going to "out-talent" Nebraska, or a lot of teams in the Big Ten.  Where Northwestern wins games is by keeping the scores relatively close and counting on the other team to make a mistake, and capitalize on that mistake.  The worst NU team in the past 60 years should have beaten Northwestern last year.  NU was up by a TD with the ball in easy FG range.  If Riley runs the ball up the middle 3 times, NU probably makes a FG and goes up by 10, and NU wins.

I say all that because Nebraska has hired a coach which should be smart enough and have the team play better so Nebraska isn't giving away football games.  There may be an adjustment period in 2018, and there may be mistake-filled games that happen once a year, but isn't this why NU hired Scott Frost?  If Frost gets NU to the point where they are beating the teams NU should beat on a regular basis, that is the first step.  The next step is winning the toss-up games more often than not, and NU is a championship contender.

This.  So Much This.

Northwestern has really only played us tough twice - 2011 and 2017.  Maybe - maybe - you could throw 2015 in there as well.  But most of the time we have been the dominant team everywhere except the scoreboard.  We've just shot ourselves in the foot enough to make the games close.

Total Offense Yards vs. Northwestern

2011: NU - 411; NW - 468

2012: NU - 543; NW - 301

2013: NU - 472; NW - 326

2014: NU - 471; NW - 290

2015: NU - 373; NW - 333

2016: NU - 556; NW - 388

2017: NU - 337; NW - 475

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Was that 9-4 record because we had good players or because we played bad opponents?

We had average players, beat some average teams, took Wisconsin into overtime at Camp Randall, and got humiliated by Ohio State in Columbus. 

If we weren't missing virtually every skill position to injury, we probably take Tennessee and finish 10 - 3. 

Even then, we wouldn't have been impressed. There was plenty of room for improvement, and supposedly it was getting the right players in place. 

This year we have the same two away games at Wisconsin and Ohio State, and are essentially swapping Michigan for Indiana and Michigan State for Maryland. It's a marginally tougher season, but uhm....if we're waiting for the Big 10 to get easier across the board, that might never happen.

Scott Frost only has two years of head coaching experience, but posted a six game improvement his first season, followed by a 7 game improvement, taking the roster of players he inherited from an 0 - 12 team and beating one of the SEC's best for an undefeated season. 

So yeah. I'm okay with the expectations. 

Not all about the win count, of course. We know good football when we see it. 

 

[Treand3]

I keep hearing that year after year, but is Northwestern that "tough of a team".  Hear me out.  Northwestern has had good records and has beaten NU a number of times since NU has joined the Big Ten.  But, I think those Nebraska losses were more due to coaching incompetence and mistakes.  Northwestern is not going to "out-talent" Nebraska, or a lot of teams in the Big Ten.  Where Northwestern wins games is by keeping the scores relatively close and counting on the other team to make a mistake, and capitalize on that mistake.  The worst NU team in the past 60 years should have beaten Northwestern last year.  NU was up by a TD with the ball in easy FG range.  If Riley runs the ball up the middle 3 times, NU probably makes a FG and goes up by 10, and NU wins.

I say all that because Nebraska has hired a coach which should be smart enough and have the team play better so Nebraska isn't giving away football games.  There may be an adjustment period in 2018, and there may be mistake-filled games that happen once a year, but isn't this why NU hired Scott Frost?  If Frost gets NU to the point where they are beating the teams NU should beat on a regular basis, that is the first step.  The next step is winning the toss-up games more often than not, and NU is a championship contender.

Agree. All the games Nebraska has lost to NW have resulted in a mistake by the Huskers. A fumble inside the 5 yard line('11), A pick 6 ('15) and poorly timed turnover in the 4th qtr that prevented a 10 point lead only to lose in OT last year. Every NW win had been no greater than 7 point margin('17), the others were 3 ('11) and 2 ('15). Nevertheless, Nebraska has had close wins of their own: 1 point in '12 where NU couldn't field a punt to save their lives or 3 point win in '13 when Armstrong threw 3 INTs(Kellogg 1).

The only decisive wins of this series during the B1G era have been in favor of Nebraska, a 21 point win in '14 and an '11 point victory in '16, and if anyone remembers that game the score should've been much worse.

 

[Toe]

"Some of the pieces that were in place particularly on offense I think fit us pretty well. You look at the receiver group and Stanley Morgan and JD [Spielman] and Tyjon Lindsey, those are the type of guys we would recruit," Frost said.

Reading the tea leaves a bit, I kinda wonder if that might favor Gebbia as the starter. Like Martinez might be the better athlete, but if Gebbia is a better passer, he might be able to get more out of the offense as a whole.

 

[JJ Husker]

I keep hearing that the schedule is 'BRUTAL", but I still don't see it that way.  Yes, at Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio State are going to be very tough games, but I still see Northwestern, Iowa, and Michigan State as very winnable games, especially considering the final month of the season is when I expect NU to be playing the best football (unless the team is decimated by injuries).

Everyone needs to read this...

I also agree. This schedule did (past tense) look "brutal" when viewed through the perspective of it being a Riley coached team. Now not so much. The only opponent I would call brutal is tOSU. Michigan, Wiscy and MSU are simply tough games. I wouldn't be near as worried about Michigan if it were later in the season or at home. And I don't care where we play Iowa, NW or Purdue, those are no longer brutal games. Riley & Co. had a knack for making every team on our schedule look brutal. Yes, I realize we will have a new QB and be learning new systems so there will be growing pains but I really feel the floor is 8 wins in our current situation with this schedule. I really am anticipating 9 wins. That is not to say I will be disappointed with fewer. I'll be happy as a pig in sh!t if we just play hard and have a coherent plan, which we do and will.

 

[ColoradoHusk]

This.  So Much This.

Northwestern has really only played us tough twice - 2011 and 2017.  Maybe - maybe - you could throw 2015 in there as well.  But most of the time we have been the dominant team everywhere except the scoreboard.  We've just shot ourselves in the foot enough to make the games close.

Total Offense Yards vs. Northwestern

2011: NU - 411; NW - 468

2012: NU - 543; NW - 301

2013: NU - 472; NW - 326

2014: NU - 471; NW - 290

2015: NU - 373; NW - 333

2016: NU - 556; NW - 388

2017: NU - 337; NW - 475

The 2017 game was the outlier as NW was the dominant team in the 1st half and should have had a bigger lead.  Then they had some bonehead coaching moves in the 3rd quarter, including having Thorson try to throw the ball all over the field, leading to a NU pick 6.  Fitzgerald's poor coaching day in 2017 was then let off the hook by Riley and Langsdorf with that 4th quarter INT.

 

[knapplc]

We had average players, beat some average teams, took Wisconsin into overtime at Camp Randall, and got humiliated by Ohio State in Columbus. 

If we weren't missing virtually every skill position to injury, we probably take Tennessee and finish 10 - 3. 

Even then, we wouldn't have been impressed. There was plenty of room for improvement, and supposedly it was getting the right players in place. 

This year we have the same two away games at Wisconsin and Ohio State, and are essentially swapping Michigan for Indiana and Michigan State for Maryland. It's a marginally tougher season, but uhm....if we're waiting for the Big 10 to get easier across the board, that might never happen.

Scott Frost only has two years of head coaching experience, but posted a six game improvement his first season, followed by a 7 game improvement, taking the roster of players he inherited from an 0 - 12 team and beating one of the SEC's best for an undefeated season. 

So yeah. I'm okay with the expectations. 

Not all about the win count, of course. We know good football when we see it. 

The question most likely boils down to how much talent we have on the roster, and what Frost can get out of them. Maybe Riley was our Jeff Blake and Frost will be our Stoops.

 

[RedSavage]

Was that 9-4 record because we had good players or because we played bad opponents?

Nebraska's best win that year was against 9-4 Minnesota, whose SOS was 65th in the nation. We played seven teams with a winning record and went 3-4. The nine teams we beat had a combined record of 47-67. Against teams above .500 we were outscored 154-210, and got beat by two or more TDs three times.

It's numbers like that that make me hesitate to get too giddy about wins & losses this year. I think everyone putting a number on wins is brave. It's hard to say what we'll see. All I'm expecting is more fight, different schemes, tons of procedural penalties, and some really fun football (at times). 

What about putting $165 to win $100 on O-6.5 wins?

You're not wrong though.  It's somewhat difficult to tell what this team will be like this year when we've got the socks beat off us against teams with a pulse the last couple years.  Including teams that barely had a pulse (see NIU).

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

You're not wrong though.  It's somewhat difficult to tell what this team will be like this year when we've got the socks beat off us against teams with a pulse the last couple years.  Including teams that barely had a pulse (see NIU).

We wouldn't be the first team to fall asleep against NIU. Or this year's version: Troy. 

Maybe the hardest lesson is that Nebraska can no longer intimidate lesser programs based on reputation alone. We need to be the team playing balls out like an underdog. 

 

[knapplc]

We need to be the team playing balls out like an underdog. 

YES. I've been waiting for that for years. We've been playing like "we're Nebraska" for years... but we haven't been that Nebraska in a long, long time. 

 

[RedSavage]

We wouldn't be the first team to fall asleep against NIU. Or this year's version: Troy. 

Maybe the hardest lesson is that Nebraska can no longer intimidate lesser programs based on reputation alone. We need to be the team playing balls out like an underdog. 

You're absolutely right but hopefully that will change in the next few years and we can return to that once vaunted reputation.

 

[Sker fer life]

Help us, Scotti-Wan Frostobi, you're our only hope.

 

[Mavric]

The 2017 game was the outlier as NW was the dominant team in the 1st half and should have had a bigger lead.  Then they had some bonehead coaching moves in the 3rd quarter, including having Thorson try to throw the ball all over the field, leading to a NU pick 6.  Fitzgerald's poor coaching day in 2017 was then let off the hook by Riley and Langsdorf with that 4th quarter INT.

There are a lot of people who insist that Fitz is a great coach.  I do give him credit for getting more wins that you'd expect from the school that he's at.  But it's not like he's the only one who's won there either.

And from what I've seen from him in-game, I wouldn't put him in the "great" category by any stretch.  Maybe he's very good in the development part of the job but I wouldn't even consider him average from a game-management perspective (from the admittedly small sample size of his games that I've watched).

 

[ColoradoHusk]

There are a lot of people who insist that Fitz is a great coach.  I do give him credit for getting more wins that you'd expect from the school that he's at.  But it's not like he's the only one who's won there either.

And from what I've seen from him in-game, I wouldn't put him in the "great" category by any stretch.  Maybe he's very good in the development part of the job but I wouldn't even consider him average from a game-management perspective (from the admittedly small sample size of his games that I've watched).

I don't get the love affair that Fitz gets either.  It helps that the BTN likes to pump up the local team (Northwestern being in Chicago), and yes he's done a good job of having winning seasons.  But, like you said, he's not the only coach who has won there in the past 25 years, and he is not the best game manager.  The best thing he does is that he realizes the type of talent he's able to get at NW and tries to coach the team to "not lose".  By that, I mean, he has his teams to limit mistakes and turnovers (play smart) and then try to pull close games out at the end.  That's why he is able to pull of some nice upsets, but it's also why he has head-scratching losses.

 

[runningblind]

I don't get the love affair that Fitz gets either.  It helps that the BTN likes to pump up the local team (Northwestern being in Chicago), and yes he's done a good job of having winning seasons.  But, like you said, he's not the only coach who has won there in the past 25 years, and he is not the best game manager.  The best thing he does is that he realizes the type of talent he's able to get at NW and tries to coach the team to "not lose".  By that, I mean, he has his teams to limit mistakes and turnovers (play smart) and then try to pull close games out at the end.  That's why he is able to pull of some nice upsets, but it's also why he has head-scratching losses.

You should get it, because it is the same reason people love Mike Riley.  Decent coach, but a really nice, upstanding, likeable guy. If you are a mediocre coach, but a jerk, (or at least appear outwardly like one), it will be the opposite reaction by the hordes. Aka, Bo Pelini.