It goes pretty much without saying that from the moment Hank Bounds and Ronnie Green named Bill Moos the AD, and then tasked him to bring Scott Frost home, the last 12 months have been nothing but a resounding success for the Husker program.
Anticipation for year two is extremely high since it seems Frost was successful in finding what appears to be a transcendent QB in year one. His program finished out the first season playing their best football of the year and it's pretty clear going into his second season that Frost will have been successful at flipping both the roster, and the culture, both on and off the field of play.
To say things have generally been going good for Frost as head Husker would be an understatement.
However, the first year clearly wasn't without set-backs. And this is best illustrated by a 13 day stretch spanning from Aug 26th to Sept 8th to begin the 2018 season. The sequence of events that unfolded came close to derailing the season, and the Frost era, before it had even gotten started.
Aug 26th - Frost names true freshman Adrian Martinez as his starting QB. That decision led to fellow QB Tristan Gebbia no-showing a Monday practice and then announcing his departure from the program effective immediately. Gebbia's decision was clearly unexpected news and served as a gut punch to the program. For the entirety of his recruitment, red shirt season and Frost's early tenure, Gebbia was widely regarded as a model Husker, if not "the" Husker, to help the program transition under the new regime.
Instead, Gebbia's departure created pause and a sense of unease around the program that was only going to be lifted by playing football games that matter. It was a good thing the season started less than a week away. Or was it?
Sept 1st - Six days later, the Akron game gets cancelled due to lightening. The coaches and players were ready to go, a national FOX broadcast audience was ready to go and eighty thousand fans in the stadium were definitely primed and ready to go. There was both figurative, and then literal, electricity in the air. See, apparently Mother Nature wasn't ready to go and so the Frost era began with a resounding "thud".
The massive amounts of energy and emotion that had been building were now left unspent and the crazy amount of momentum that Frost & Co had previously been enjoying was losing steam.
Sept 7th - Just seven days later, the program finally got the chance to unveil the Frost led Huskers and everything was going pretty much according to plan until about 4 minutes remained in the 4th qtr.
At that point, the Huskers were up by a point and had the ball, and a first down, at about mid-field. They appeared in control of the games outcome behind a true freshman QB who'd clearly grown more comfortable throughout the contest and were just a little burned clock, along with a potential FG or TD, from icing their first win under Scott Frost.
That's when a fairly benign rush by Martinez off the right side turned into a nightmare scenario for the Huskers as their starting QB wasn't able to get up off the turf just 13 days after their "neck in neck" back-up had decided to bolt Lincoln.
The nightmare scenario created by those earlier decisions had now become reality and the program sputtered, misfired and ultimately dropped any chance of winning that game over the last few minutes in Martinez's absence.
Who really knows what that 13 days had to do with the Huskers bottoming out 2 weeks later in Ann Arbor and ultimately starting the season 0-6 but I think it's without question that that 13 day span represents the only real speed bump in what has been a race car like approach that Frost & Co have taken in reshaping this program in their image.
Looking back, I don't think it can be undersold just how impressive it was for the administration, coaches and players to regain their balance and right the ship down the stretch. To be able to reclaim the momentum they'd built early-on demonstrates just how much effort and willpower each member of the program is expending to get this thing fixed.
Maybe those 13 days simply become a footnote to this era of Husker football. Something easily forgotten should Frost & Co prove successful at having this program again competing for championships.
Or, maybe those 13 days prove to mean so much more. Hopefully for good reasons rather than bad.
The one thing we all know is that eventually, time will tell....
GBR!
Anticipation for year two is extremely high since it seems Frost was successful in finding what appears to be a transcendent QB in year one. His program finished out the first season playing their best football of the year and it's pretty clear going into his second season that Frost will have been successful at flipping both the roster, and the culture, both on and off the field of play.
To say things have generally been going good for Frost as head Husker would be an understatement.
However, the first year clearly wasn't without set-backs. And this is best illustrated by a 13 day stretch spanning from Aug 26th to Sept 8th to begin the 2018 season. The sequence of events that unfolded came close to derailing the season, and the Frost era, before it had even gotten started.
Aug 26th - Frost names true freshman Adrian Martinez as his starting QB. That decision led to fellow QB Tristan Gebbia no-showing a Monday practice and then announcing his departure from the program effective immediately. Gebbia's decision was clearly unexpected news and served as a gut punch to the program. For the entirety of his recruitment, red shirt season and Frost's early tenure, Gebbia was widely regarded as a model Husker, if not "the" Husker, to help the program transition under the new regime.
Instead, Gebbia's departure created pause and a sense of unease around the program that was only going to be lifted by playing football games that matter. It was a good thing the season started less than a week away. Or was it?
Sept 1st - Six days later, the Akron game gets cancelled due to lightening. The coaches and players were ready to go, a national FOX broadcast audience was ready to go and eighty thousand fans in the stadium were definitely primed and ready to go. There was both figurative, and then literal, electricity in the air. See, apparently Mother Nature wasn't ready to go and so the Frost era began with a resounding "thud".
The massive amounts of energy and emotion that had been building were now left unspent and the crazy amount of momentum that Frost & Co had previously been enjoying was losing steam.
Sept 7th - Just seven days later, the program finally got the chance to unveil the Frost led Huskers and everything was going pretty much according to plan until about 4 minutes remained in the 4th qtr.
At that point, the Huskers were up by a point and had the ball, and a first down, at about mid-field. They appeared in control of the games outcome behind a true freshman QB who'd clearly grown more comfortable throughout the contest and were just a little burned clock, along with a potential FG or TD, from icing their first win under Scott Frost.
That's when a fairly benign rush by Martinez off the right side turned into a nightmare scenario for the Huskers as their starting QB wasn't able to get up off the turf just 13 days after their "neck in neck" back-up had decided to bolt Lincoln.
The nightmare scenario created by those earlier decisions had now become reality and the program sputtered, misfired and ultimately dropped any chance of winning that game over the last few minutes in Martinez's absence.
Who really knows what that 13 days had to do with the Huskers bottoming out 2 weeks later in Ann Arbor and ultimately starting the season 0-6 but I think it's without question that that 13 day span represents the only real speed bump in what has been a race car like approach that Frost & Co have taken in reshaping this program in their image.
Looking back, I don't think it can be undersold just how impressive it was for the administration, coaches and players to regain their balance and right the ship down the stretch. To be able to reclaim the momentum they'd built early-on demonstrates just how much effort and willpower each member of the program is expending to get this thing fixed.
Maybe those 13 days simply become a footnote to this era of Husker football. Something easily forgotten should Frost & Co prove successful at having this program again competing for championships.
Or, maybe those 13 days prove to mean so much more. Hopefully for good reasons rather than bad.
The one thing we all know is that eventually, time will tell....
GBR!
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