Frost, staff quickly put UCF commitment concerns to rest

ATLANTA - As happy as Central Florida’s players were to have Scott Frost and the rest of their coaches stick with them through the Peach Bowl despite moving on to Nebraska, they couldn’t help but question how dialed in the staff would be while trying to juggle two jobs.

Those doubts were immediately put to rest when the Knights reconvened for their first bowl practice in Orlando.

“Our first Monday practice after our break, obviously there was a little confusion in the air, and it felt weird at first,” senior linebacker Shaquem Griffin said. “But after that first day, we just kind of sky-rocketed off. We really felt like the coaches were really there for us.

“Usually when you have teams who have coaches that go to another team, they just go off and start recruiting and not really worrying about the team that they just left. We didn’t get that feeling from them. They came in, and Coach Frost was flying back and forth like crazy. I remember he came to practice one day and threw up. But it was because he wanted to be there for us.”

Defensive coordinator Erik Chinander - who is following Frost to Lincoln along with the rest of the UCF staff - said the past few weeks had been a mixture of excitement for the future and bittersweet emotions of preparing for one final game with the Knights.

Like Frost, Chinander put in some long work days trying to game plan for Auburn while also getting a jump on recruiting for the Huskers. As much as he’s looking forward to his next venture, Chinander reiterated that priority No. 1 was finishing UCF’s season on a high note.

“Every time we’ve been in a New Year’s Bowl game, no matter what school we’ve been at, that first week for finals, giving the kids time off to recharge, that’s when we recruited anyways,” Chinander said. “We would’ve been out recruiting no matter what school we were at.

“That second week, what normally happens is that’s called a skeleton practice. Usually the coordinators and GA’s run that practice and everybody else is out recruiting, which we would’ve done this time around.

“Scott said, ‘I don’t want to do that, I want to finish this thing off. We get one more chance with these guys, let’s finish it off the right way.’ So he kept everyone back. So was it a little bit of grind? Yeah, it was, but it was worth it.”

Not only did Frost and his staff return to Orlando ready to hit the ground running at the first Peach Bowl practice, they had also been scouting Auburn and formulating their game plan for a full week.

When the players arrived for the first practice, the staff handed out thick scouting report packets on the Tigers. For Griffin and the rest of the Knights, that said everything as to how committed Frost and Co. were to make the most of their final game together.

“They didn’t have to do that, but it just goes to show how much they were there for us,” Griffin said. “We knew it immediately. If you give us a full packet on Auburn before we even start practicing, you mean business. They didn’t have to do that. They could’ve been focused on recruiting and everything else before they got back to us…

“I’m just thankful. We could have had any other coaches who would have just left us out to dry, but this coaching staff wouldn’t do that. I’m just happy to have the opportunity to be with them.”

- Robin Washut

Around the media, Frost can be very guarded with his opinions and thoughts at times. However, behind the scenes, the constant thing you hear about him is he’s a "players' coach."

UCF defensive back Tre Neal gave some more insight on why Frost is so beloved by his players.

“I think it’s one of those things with him being a young guy, he’s very relatable to a lot of the players,” Neal said. “He’s out there, he’s an active guy. Sometimes he’ll get in there and do some drills with us, and he’ll come in with the DB’s and come in and do some drills with us. He’ll go in with the linebackers, running backs, quarterbacks; When you see that with your coach, it’s just different.

“Me growing up, all my coaches just kind of stood in the middle and they kind of just facilitated everything. He does that, but he adds his little flare to it.”

Neal even joked that Frost would lift with the players sometimes, and he typically puts more on the bar than they do.

“In the summer he came in one time and asked ‘what are you guys doing?’ I said we are power cleaning,” Neal said. “I was on my last set, and it was like 295-300, and that was his warm-up set. I was like ‘wow, this guy still has it in him.’”

- Sean Callahan

Some coaches are more particular than others about their game day environment, as Nebraska fans quickly learned with its previous defensive coordinator.

Chinander, on the other hand, has proven to be willing to be wherever he feels is best for an individual team when it comes to calling games.

For nearly the first 15 years of his career as a defensive coach, Chinander had worked almost exclusively in the coaches’ box during games. That changed when he took over as defensive coordinator at UCF.

“That first spring (of 2016), the first scrimmage I went up in the box like I’d been doing for 12 or 15 years, and there were a lot of arguments going on on the field, there was a lot of position-to-position stuff going on,” Chinander said.

“The seniors came to me and said, ‘Coach, you need to be down there with us.’ So that kind of told the tale of why good players were losing a lot of football games.”

His presence on the sideline obviously wasn’t the sole solution to UCF’s internal issues coming off of a disastrous 0-12 record the season before, but Chinander felt having another calming voice on the field was far more important than his own controlled coaching environment.

“Culture beats scheme 100 out of 100 times,” Chinander said.

- Robin Washut

When Auburn offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey looks at what Frost and his coaching staff have done this last month, he has a lot of respect with how they were able to manage both situations at Nebraska and UCF.

Lindsey said the early signing day this year probably even made things that much more challenging.

“When I went to Arizona State I got hired on Dec. 11 and coached the bowl game on Jan. 2 or Jan. 3, and I hadn’t been with that team all year, and I thought that was tremendously tough,” Lindsey said. “I can only imagine, because I know right now with the early signing period and just being at Auburn, practicing for a bowl game, recruiting and making sure signing day went off right, I can’t imagine doing that at a different school and working at another place.

“I think that says a lot about Coach Frost and those guys he’s taking with them. From what I understand they are all going with him, so I think that’s pretty neat. I think those guys have probably been burning the candle at both ends for sure, and I think it says a lot about the kind of people they are making sure they want to stay there and finish for their players. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about – the players. I think that’s pretty neat.”

- Sean Callahan

***When studying Chinander’s defense, Lindsey said it presents a lot of different challenges.

“Everybody is playing odd defensive (fronts) now,” Lindsey said. “They do a good job of that, and they do a good job of mixing their looks up. I think one of the things that stick out to be about those guys is they are very competitive. They challenge the wide-outs, they challenge from the standpoint that they are going to attack and try to be physical.”

***Earlier this year Frost got a lot of national praise when he played scout team quarterback in practice for UCF to help prepare their defense for Navy’s triple option offense. Neal said a lot of guys were pretty fired up to see Frost out there getting after it with them.

“I feel like some of those defensive linemen, they wanted that,” Neal said. “They were trying to tackle him a little bit. He was pretty good. He made those reads really quick. It was one of those things where he didn’t even have shoulder pads on, but it still looked like he had shoulder pads on. He’s a pretty big dude out there.”