A week after a come-from-ahead loss to Northwestern in Dublin, Ireland, Nebraska made its 2022 home debut against Football Championship Subdivision playoff-regular North Dakota.
And as has so often been the case in Scott Frost’s embattled five-year return to his alma mater, Nebraska found itself in the tightest of situations – tied 17-all with North Dakota deep into the third quarter before it closed the game on a 21-0 scoring binge for an 38-17 win.
The Cornhuskers’ offense was so markedly different during the game’s second half – when the home team scored 31 points – that Frost was asked after the game if he already had taken back play-calling duties from first-year offensive coordinator Mark Whipple.
“I’m not ever going to get into that,” said Frost, who admitted last week that it had been tough for him to relinquish play-calling duties as he entered a make-or-break season for his future atop the Nebraska program. “We’ve got a lot of smart people on the staff, and the more we can cooperate the better we’re going to be.”
It’s the second-straight week that Frost has seemingly lamented a lack of cooperation from his new offensive staff, and he also signaled that Nebraska has continued to adjust to myriad new faces – both on the playing roster and the coaching staff.
He also said he had hoped his team would commit fewer “dumb plays” in order to get more players into the game.
“I hoped that we would do what we did in the second half in the first half,” Frost said. “I hoped we’d get some more guys in at the end of the game. I hoped we’d make fewer dumb plays and give-up plays.
“But the other team practices, too. Some of what happened is credit to them and some of the things are things that we can fix.”
The Huskers have another home game against a non-conference, non-Power 5 foe – Georgia Southern – before they host archnemesis Oklahoma Sept. 17.