Everyone wants to know what’s changed at Nebraska. What’s different about coach Scott Frost’s second team that has transformed it, after back-to-back four-win seasons for the first time in nearly 60 years, into a trendy pick to win the Big Ten West?
Defensive coordinator Erik Chinander hears all the suggestions about physicality and execution and scheme. He offers something else.
“They want to play for each other,” he said. “The ‘care factor’ is high right now — about each other and about the program. Scott does an unbelievable job. And I think what makes him the best is the culture piece of this whole thing.”
When Frost and Chinander arrived in Lincoln in December 2017 along with the rest of the staff after two seasons at UCF, Nebraska players largely stayed out of the football offices.
“It was like a ghost town,” Chinander said. “They didn’t come around here, period. And now I can’t chase them out. They’re in here watching film. I don’t always know if they’re watching the right things or what they’re watching. But I know they’re watching, and I know they’re together. I know they work out and organize their own stuff. They like football and they care about one another. That wasn’t the case when we first got here.”
The key to Nebraska’s improvement — and it has, no doubt, improved considerably during Frost’s 18 months in charge — involves those bonds that have formed. No longer, Chinander said, are the Huskers out on the field at practice to play for themselves. The transformation began last season after Game 5, when Nebraska lost by two touchdowns at home to Purdue.
Improvement showed as the Huskers played close in subsequent losses at Wisconsin and Northwestern, followed by four wins in the final six games. Tight November losses at Ohio State and Iowa bolstered confidence in the apparent turnaround.
But the real strides came away from the playing field.
“It’s safe to say a lot of maturing happened,” linebacker Mohamed Barry said. “Coach Frost’s vision is starting to take hold in this program.”
