Scott Frost reveals how he handles the pressure of coaching at Nebraska

Nebraska coach Scott Frost knows he is on the hot seat entering 2022. In his four seasons at the helm, the Cornhuskers head man has still yet to deliver a winning season or take the team to a bowl game.

Frost took a pay cut of $1 million this offseason to keep his job for one more year. He also had his buyout cut in half from $15 million to $7.5 million. With that in mind, it seems extra critical that he perform well in 2022 in order to keep his job. But despite this immense amount of pressure, Frost remains unfazed.

“I don’t pay any attention to it,” the coach said Tuesday at Big Ten Media Days. “Any year you’re coaching at a school like Nebraska or any of these schools in the Big Ten there’s going to be pressure to win. We certainly were playing catch-up with a lot of teams for a long time. I think we’ve done a good job closing the gap. Had our chance to win a lot more games than we have, and it’s our time to do it. The pressure doesn’t change.”

Scott Frost is a Nebraska alumnus, so there is a sense that administrators would like to see him succeed in Lincoln. Prior to taking over as the Cornhuskers head coach, he led UCF to 13-0 season in 2017.

Although Nebraska’s 3-9 finish from this past season seems to indicate it was one of the worst teams in college football, the Cornhuskers were closer to success than you might think. All of their losses came by single digits, and if just a few plays went differently they could have been sitting with a winning record. That’s partly why Frost said he isn’t making any major changes to his coaching strategy in 2022.

“When you feel like you’re doing the right thing a complete change of course is the wrong way to go,” he said. “There’s always little things that we might tweak or ways for us to look to get a little bit better. My role’s going to change a little bit having an offensive coordinator I trust to take it over a little bit. But for the most part we’ve been doing it the right way, it just hasn’t led to the results we want yet. This year’s going to be different.”

Frost added 14 players through the transfer portal this offseason in attempt to fill some of the holes from last season. That includes former Texas quarterback Casey Thompson and Florida State quarterback Chubba Purdy, both of whom will compete for the starting job. It will be the first year of the Scott Frost era that a quarterback other than Adrian Martinez has started.

Frost will hope it also coincides with his first winning season and gets him off the hot seat. The Cornhuskers are set to kick things off on Aug. 27 with a Big Ten matchup against Northwestern.