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Huard: Frost’s loyalty to his staff has gotten a lot of people’s attention

ATLANTA - In today’s world of high-dollar coaching changes in college football, what Scott Frost did with his coaching staff is nearly unheard of.

Typically, when a coach leaves a lesser job for what’s perceived a more prestigious one, very few of his coaching staff comes with him. Sometimes the athletic director at your new school won’t allow you to take very many coaches, and sometimes coaches feel they have to upgrade their staff with “bigger names” to appease their new fan base.

With Frost, he took all 12 of his top coaches with him, and nearly all of his key support staff members are following to Lincoln as well.

“The fact that he’s taking every coach, and not leaving one of them behind, in the coaching fraternity is unheard of – unheard of,” ESPN’s Brock Huard said. “There are coaches that have left here recently and brought one coach on the staff and left the other 10 to go figure it out. In all the coaches I’ve run into and bumped into and talked to through all of this with him, that’s what’s resonated: ‘Man, he took every one of them.’ It doesn’t happen like that very often.”

Huard added Athletic Director Bill Moos deserves a lot of credit as well, for not trying to force moves on Frost.

“That speaks to why Nebraska wanted him so desperately,” Huard said. “That speaks to the Tom Osborne DNA. These guys were good enough to go from 0-12 to 12-0, they are good enough to come here. I know that’s (Frost’s) quote, and that’s not mine, and it’s true.

“It speaks to loyalty, and it speaks to so many things we don’t see in today’s college football. We just don’t. We don’t see now even with players in programs, like the individual college players in their programs, we don’t see it with coaches in programs – we don’t see near enough of it. It overflows, his cup overflows with that loyalty in that manner.”

Huard still remembers his 1997 game vs. Frost quite well

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You can argue that Frost’s 1997 game at Washington against Huard was the moment that ultimately launched his career.

Before that, Frost was coming off a disappointing 1996 season where the Huskers lost games to both Arizona State and Texas in the Big 12 championship. The week before their 1997 game at Washington, he was also booed in the third quarter by Husker fans as NU struggled to beat coincidentally UCF.

From that moment on, things turned for Frost, and he hasn’t looked back since.

“We were both top 5 and it was an unbelievably spectacular day,” Huard said. “I remember I was just telling this story Thursday night in our production meeting for our Ohio State-USC game. I said ‘Sam Darnold is going to feel what I felt when I lined up against Nebraska.’

“That was coming under center back in the day when we went under center, and I could just feel Grant Wistrom and Mike Rucker and Jason Peter before the snap. I could just sense them. I could feel their breathing. I’m under center and I was like ‘this is a little bit different animal,’ and Sam Darnold felt that against Ohio State Friday night. They didn’t anticipate it, they should have, and he took eight sacks and took a beating. I got knocked out of that game, I do remember that. A little bit for McKenzie (Milton) tomorrow will be the same way.”

Will the Chip Kelly offense work in the Big Ten?

Living in the Pacific Northwest, Huard has a pretty good handle on Frost and what he does offensively. Huard said most of what Frost does offensively comes from former Oregon head coach Chip Kelly’s system.

“You look at all the people (Frost) has worked under. It’s obviously been well documented. Obviously, Bill Walsh and everybody,” Huard said. “But it’s dominated by Chip. That’s where I think it’s the deepest. A lot of people, they minor in the Chip Kelly system, you see it all over college football. ‘I’m going to steal this play or this concept, and I’m going to minor in it.’ He majors in it, just as Chip does.

“If they are going to do X, we can do Y. Other people that minor in it, they can’t get to Y. They kind of have to stay on X, and let's turn the page and go to the next play.”

As for how that system will work at Nebraska and the Big Ten, that remains to be seen.

“I don’t think it’s a challenge, I think it’s an opportunity,” Huard said. “That’s one of the only reasons why I think he left. I think in their side of the division, it’s an immense opportunity. I think he’ll have every resource available to him. He needs his McKenzie Milton. Where is my McKenzie Milton? Is it going to be his top-300 QB (Adrian Martinez) he got out of California that’s going to enroll early and take some lumps as a freshman? Maybe. Ultimately that’s what he will need there.”

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