Nebraska coach Scott Frost met with the media following the Huskers’ 28-21 win over Rutgers. Frost spoke about the team overcoming adversity in the game, the defensive performance, how tough the year has been on everyone and more.
Here is the full transcript from his time with the media.
On what made him go for the fourth and two late:
“Yeah, just felt good about our play call and the way we’re moving it. Wanted to stay aggressive.”
On how much harder the team made things in this game:
“So, what I told them after the game is this has been happening way too often. It starts with me as the head coach. The details and special teams, the ball security, the dumb penalties have cost us all year. We’d have a better record right now if we weren’t doing things like that to ourselves and it’s hard to overcome those things in any game much less than the Big Ten. We were able to overcome it tonight. But we’re a good enough football team to win a lot of games if we don’t do those things and we got to get them stopped.”
On the quarterback availability for tonight’s game:
“Luke wasn’t available tonight for health reasons. He’ll be fine. Logan Smothers was ready to go in if we needed him to go in. He had a good week of practice. We put a lot on Adrian tonight and kind of let everything hang tonight. Whatever plays we needed to run. Some mistakes that I don’t want to see our quarterback make with two fumbles and two interceptions. But he made a lot of good plays. Just like a lot of the guys, Mills and Cam and some others. I was impressed with the way they kept battling.”
On where the physical run right at the defense mentality has been all season:
“I don’t think it’s been absent. It’s been inconsistent. We should have had the same success in the first half as we had in the second half offensively. We fumbled on the first drive then we fumbled again. Those are the things that happened to us all year. And again, that starts with me as the head coach to make sure that detail and discipline in our program’s good enough that those things don’t happen. But when we’ve clicked and not shot ourselves in the foot, it’s been pretty good all year. It just hasn’t been consistent enough. In the second half, it came together.”
On what was going on with special teams tonight on the kickoff return for a touchdown:
“We didn’t decide to kick it there. I appreciate you saying good game. You’re pointing out things that we need to fix. He had a touchdown against us a year ago. Our plan was not to kick it to him, wanted to kick away from him. That wasn’t working out. We were sky kicking it and giving them too good of field position. Wanted the ball kicked deep away from him. I don’t really have an answer for you. Those are bad mistakes that shouldn’t happen and can’t happen.”
On the sense of if the team wants to play another game:
“I need to talk to guys about it. I got to see if there’s an opportunity for us to do it or not. This has been a long, hard year for a lot of people. We had you in Sam to talk to us about all the things we were doing early on in the year to try to make it safe for our guys to come back and work out. If I had of known the season was going to get delayed I don’t think I brought them back as early. Some of our guys haven’t seen their family since March or April. It’s been a long haul. I think it’d be great for us if we had an opportunity to go play another game. Don’t know if we have that opportunity yet, but I’m going to let the guys decide if if they have gas left in the tank or not. We’ll make that decision.
On if it matters who they’d play or when:
“When you play, maybe. We just came off a disappointing game last week and had to turn around and get the guys ready to play again in five days on the road with a nor’easter at night. It took a lot of effort and energy for everybody to get the guys ready to play this week. You know if we have to turn around and do it again in six or seven days when we’re going to get home at four in the morning. I don’t know how many guys would be excited about that. So we’d have to see have to see what’s out there and I’m going to let the kids decide what they wanted to do.”
On Dedrick Mills’ performance and having more bounce:
“I think he was more healthy. He’s been nursing a few things for the past few weeks. Thought he ran hard. We had some warriors out there tonight. Wan’Dale got a really good shot and had a rib bruise and heat and man he battled. Mills was a warrior tonight. A bunch of the guys on defense were warriors. I was impressed with the way that that Millsy ran it tonight. He’s a team guy. I also thought the offensive line, I have to watch the tape but I feel like they probably played their best game tonight. That’s an encouraging thing, particularly playing for young players on that offensive line.”
On Turner Corcoran making his first start:
“I didn’t notice him. That probably means he played pretty well. I think he had one penalty that didn’t matter because we threw an interception on the play. But if we ran for 365 yards and I didn’t notice a freshman left tackle that probably means he played pretty well. So we’ll watch the tape and figure it out. But he’s got a lot of good football ahead of him.”
On the defense keeping the team’s head above water during the game:
“I said it this week in press conference. I think the defense has played well enough this year for us to have a chance to win almost every game we played this year. Maybe with the exception of one. It’s hard to overcome four turnovers, a fake punt and kick return touchdown. I don’t know if anybody in the country has done that this year. But the defense kept battling. I thought they were really good on third down tonight which we needed to improve. I think that’s way better. Thought we were better on third down on offense tonight and that needed to get way better. We converted some touchdowns in the red zone. That needed to get better. A lot of positive things today but we need to do whatever we need to do to fix the errors.”
On the mental toll of this season for himself:
“It’s been hard on me. This whole year has been hard. Again, I don’t want anybody to feel sorry for me. There’s a lot of people that have it worse than I do through this COVID deal. But we’ve been grinding for a long time. I lost dad this year. I really expected us to turn a big corner this year and thought we had the team to do that. I still do. Really excited about the future. But I’m worn out too.”
