With one of the more marquee matchups during the opening week of the 2022 season, the Cornhuskers and Northwestern Wildcats met up in Dublin, Ireland. Both teams are not expected to do much this season, but the Irish crowd was not going to get Notre Dame or a top 25 matchup coming out of a worldwide pandemic.
With Nebraska up 28-17 after a two play, 46 yard touchdown drive that took all of 17 seconds, Cornhusker head coach Scott Frost decided to get cute. Calling an onside kick with his team up two scores proved costly. Northwestern recovered at the Nebraska 44, then scored two touchdowns in the half to go up 31-28.
Nebraska accounted for four punts and two interceptions after Frost’s play calling debacle.
This is becoming somewhat casual with Frost during his tenure in Lincoln. Remember that Frost guided Central Florida to a perfect 12-0 record in 2017, where the Golden Knights self-claimed a share of a National Championship after knocking off #7 Auburn in the Peach Bowl, the first time a team from the American Athletic Conference was involved in a BCS game. Two years later, the Cincinnati Bearcats dominated the Florida Gators in the Sugar Bowl, then became the first “Group of Five” school to make the BCS playoff last year.
Nebraska opened the 2018 season with six straight losses under Frost, where he starred as a defensive back. Frost was a part of the 1995 and 1997 National Championship teams under legendary coach Tom Osborne, and was drafted in the third round of the 1998 NFL Draft by the New York Jets.
Since taking the head job in Lincoln, Nebraska has gone 15-30, without a winning season. The last time Nebraska made a bowl game was 2016 under Mike Riley, and they have not made the Big 10 Title Game since 2012. The program’s last BCS appearance was the 2001 Rose Bowl. Nebraska football has fallen so far that their last bowl victory was the 2015 Foster Farms Bowl, when they finished the season 6-7.
Nebraska has not even sniffed a Top 25 year-end poll since 2013, where they went unranked by the Associated Press, but were 25th in the Coaches Poll.
Saturday’s loss across the pond was Nebraska’s eight in a row. For a team picked to finish fifth in the Big 10 West Division by the conference’s 14 coaches, you might want to take care of business against the team picked by those same coaches to finish dead last in the same division.
On Tuesday, Frost told reporters that there is no tension with his offensive coordinator, Eric Whipple. Frost gave up play calling duties on offense when Whipple joined his staff. However, Whipple did not call the onside kick that put the offense’s feet to the fire less than two minutes after taking that two-score lead midway through the third quarter.
Only LB Garrett Wilson received any kind of votes for Big10 Offensive or Defensive Player of the Year in the 2022 preseason poll (T-7th). Wilson surely will play at the next level, as many are predicting he would be no worse than a Day Two selection in next April’s draft. This is also assuming Frost and Whipple do not turtle up and burn their defense out playing catch-up for most of 2022.
When Chris Peterson left Cinderella Boise State for Washington after wins in two BCS games (the 2006 and 2009 Fiesta Bowls), he was able to guide the Huskies to bowl games in all six years. Tom Osborne, Frank Solich or Riley are not coming back to Lincoln.
Frost is making Husker Nation regret every week that he should not have come back to begin with.
-JC24