JD PicKell: How Scott Frost went 'full Will Ferrell-mode' with failed onside kick attempt

Nebraska coach Scott Frost is taking a lot of heat for his decision to go for an onside kick Saturday. After the Cornhuskers scored a touchdown to go up 28-17 on Northwestern with nine minutes to go in the third quarter, Frost had the Cornhuskers attempt the kick in hopes of getting the ball back and adding to their lead.

Instead, the Wildcats recovered the attempt and scored on the ensuing drive, using that momentum to eventually take a fourth-quarter lead before defeating Nebraska 31-28. In a recent YouTube video, On3’s JD PicKell compared Frost’s decision to a famous scene from the movie The Other Guys featuring Will Ferrell.

“You’re up 11 in the third quarter and Scott Frost just goes full Will Ferrell-mode in The Other Guys, puts his foot on the gas pedal, screams ‘America,'” PicKell said. “One thing led to another and they didn’t recover the onside kick. Now everybody and their mother who has a Twitter account wants to win Twitter today and have the joke about Scott Frost and how he should be fired and this is the beginning of the end. That may be the case, but to strictly harp on the onside kick I think is a little bit lazy.”

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PicKell pointed out that the result of the play likely impacted how it was perceived to some degree. If Nebraska had somehow recovered the onside kick, Frost could have received praise instead of criticism for the same decision. All he can do now is try to learn from what happened and hope to make better choices going forward.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” PicKell said. “We can talk about this on a Sunday all we want. It wasn’t executed. At the end of the day, you didn’t recover the onside kick and gave the other program life. You gave your opponent a chance to get back into it.

“Was it a high-risk, relatively medium-reward type of play? Yes. Again, hindsight 20/20, you don’t do that again. It’s not really necessary. You’re up, you have the momentum and you gave them a chance to grab some of that momentum back and then ultimately do what they did.”

Frost already appears to have taken something from the play, as he admitted after the game that he would have done things differently if he had a second chance.

“If I had it over,” he said, “I wouldn’t make the call.”

Next up for the Cornhuskers is matchup with North Dakota back home in Lincoln on Sept. 3.