Scott Frost: What looked like a great hire for Nebraska wasn’t

What looked to be a perfect union a few years ago – Scott Frost returning to Nebraska to guide the Huskers back to national prominence – instead ended Sunday when Frost was fired three games into his fifth season as coach.

Nebraska owes Frost a $15 million buyout, though it would’ve dropped 50 percent – to $7.5 million – if he had been fired after October 1. That extra $7.5 million certainly would have come in handy when hiring the new coachl

Frost, 47, is a Nebraska native and famously played quarterback on Ton Osborne’s final national-title team at Nebraska. He replaced the fired Mike Riley at Nebraska in December 2017, fresh off leading UCF to a 12-0 record. In the four weeks after his hiring, he both recruited for Nebraska and helped UCF prepare for the Peach Bowl, which they won in Frost’s final game with the Knights.

At Frost’s introductory news conference, then-Nebraska AD Bill Moos said he “got the pick of the litter” off that year’s coaching carousel. “We’re going to have a lot of fun; we’re going to build this program back,” Moos said.

Frost’s Huskers background and success at UCF – he took over a Knights program that went 0-12 the season before he got there and had them unbeaten two seasons later – indeed made him seemingly the perfect fit. He ran a high-powered offense at UCF, a lot like the one he assisted with at Oregon, and the thought was he could bring that style of play to Nebraska. And he was able to sign touted high school quarterback Adrian Martinez in his first recruiting class; Martinez was seen as a great fit for Frost’s offense.

Martinez did start for four seasons at Nebraska before transferring to Kansas State in the offseason. He is the school’s career leader in total offense, but big mistakes in key times were a hallmark of his Huskers career. Losing close games was another.

The close losses were the biggest issue for Frost; it’s as if Nebraska didn’t know how to close out a game. Nebraska was 1-5 in one-score games in Frost’s first season, but there still were enough good things in that 4-8 campaign to think Nebraska was on the rise. Nebraska closed out the season by going 4-2, with the losses by five at Ohio State and three at Iowa.

But the close losses continued in 2019, when the Huskers went 2-4 in such games and finished 5-7 to stall any momentum. Nebraska went 3-5 in the truncated 2020 season, including 2-3 in one-score games, then hit bottom last season, finishing 3-9. Eight of the nine losses came in one-score games; the other loss was by nine points.

In the offseason, Frost revamped his offensive staff, gave up play-calling duties, took a pay cut and changed his buyout terms. Still, the one-score bugaboo continued this season, with a 31-28 loss in the opener to Northwestern – a team Nebraska beat by 49 last season – followed by a desultory 38-17 win over FCS North Dakota before an embarrassing 45-42 setback to Georgia Southern on Saturday. Georgia Southern is coached by former USC coach Clay Helton.

Frost’s Nebraska tenure ended with a 16-31 record, including 5-22 in one-score games.