Peach Bowl notes: UCF coaches determined to finish

ATLANTA - The past three weeks have been quite the ride for Scott Frost and his coaching staff since it was announced they would all make their way from Central Florida to Nebraska.

The unique aspect of the situation has been Frost and his coaches’ desire to stay with their former team - one that went a perfect 12-0 en route to an American Athletic Conference title - to finish out the 2017 season against Auburn in the Peach Bowl.

Given their responsibilities with the Huskers, especially with the introduction of the very first early signing period last week, it’s certainly been a juggling act for Frost and Co.

But offensive coordinator Troy Walters, who is serving under the title of UCF’s interim head coach during bowl preparations, said there was no hesitation among the coaches to finish out what has been one of the most special seasons of their respective careers.

“You know, we really hadn't skipped a beat,” Walters said of how the staff has handled the unusual bowl month. “It's really been the same as the regular season. That's what we wanted. As a staff, we wanted to coach these guys. We wanted to finish.

“Coach Frost wanted to finish, and we wanted to be as routine as it could be. We want familiarity. What we've done all year, that's what we're doing leading up to this game, and that gives us the best chance to win.”

Central Florida’s players said any potential awkwardness around the situation quickly went away when the Knights kicked off their first bowl practice back in Orlando.

Since then, UCF quarterback McKenzie Milton said Frost, Walters, and the rest of the staff have gone about their business no differently than they had every week during their undefeated run.

“I give our coaching staff a lot of credit,” Milton said. “They would be out till the wee hours of the night recruiting for Nebraska and then still coming to practice at 7:00, 8:00 a.m., to help us game-plan and get ready for this bowl game. That's a lot of credit to them, and that just shows the dedication they have to this ball club and that they are really bought in just as much as we are.

“So I give them a lot of credit. I'm very grateful for the time we've had with them, and just the way they have bought into us. It's been a special ride with them, and we want to finish it the right way.”

Just as Frost has done since he took the Nebraska job, Walters made it clear his sole focus this week was getting Central Florida ready to finish off a 13-0 season with a win over Auburn on Monday.

Asked if the move to NU has changed how the coaches are viewing this final game with the Knights, Walters said the job change hadn’t taken their focus off of the task at hand one bit.

“This is all about the 2017 season, and what these young men have accomplished, we want to finish,” Walters said. “That's been the focus. As a staff, we've been all in. We've been 100 percent committed to these guys, and we want to finish what we started.”

Because of the devastating Hurricane Irma that impacted much of America’s southeastern coast, Central Florida went through the 2017 regular season without a single bye week until after the AAC Championship earlier this month.

That physical and mental grind makes the 12-0 record even more impressive, and while the players certainly deserve plenty of credit for fighting through, they gave just as much praise to their coaches.

“The coaches have done a really good job all season of taking care of our bodies,” junior offensive lineman Wyatt Miller said. “If that means switching up practice - after practice (strength coach Zach Duval) requires us to get in the cold tub, and the cold tub has been extremely cold this week…

“But Coach Frost and his staff have done a great job of keeping us healthy and keeping us strong physically throughout the season. Eleven weeks in a row, that's a long haul, and that's a tough haul, and I feel like they have done a great job. If you don't take those precautions, you don't take care of your players, at this point we wouldn't be 12-0.”

When watching Central Florida’s high-octane offense go to work, it would seem like a complicated system that requires near flawless execution from every player on the field in order to operate.

According to Milton, that couldn’t be much further from the truth.

“You know, I honestly don't think the concepts are hard to learn,” Milton said. “Like I say, I give a lot of credit to our coaching staff for kind of, like, dumbing down stuff so it's easy to recognize what's going to be there, what's not going to be there.”

The Knights led the country in scoring offense this season at 49.4 points per game and ranked in the top-10 nationally in total offense (5th, 540.4 ypg) and passing offense (7th, 339.3 ypg). They also ranked 33rd with 201.2 rushing yards per game.

Milton said the key to UCF’s success was providing different play options on every snap, whether it be run-pass reads or audibles specifically designed to attack man or zone coverages.

“(The coaches) do a good job of mixing it up and keeping defenses on their heels,” Milton said.

Because of how good the offense has been this season, Central Florida’s players have seen about everything from opposing defenses trying to slow them down.

The most common strategy is simply trying to keep the ball out of the Knights’ hands by running the play clock on offense and limiting the number of possessions UCF gets.

When that doesn’t work, junior receiver Tre’Quan Smith and senior tight end Jordan Akins said defenses had tried their best to lock down the passing game with double coverage.

By doing so, though, it opens up big rushing lanes for the run game.

“Some of them try to double-team some of us, which opened up a lot of other players,” Akins said. “They have been great this year stepping up when they locked down me or Tre' a couple times.”

Other teams have gotten especially creative, in some cases taking their linebackers off the field and putting as many as eight defensive backs in the game to try and keep up with UCF’s blazing team speed.

“We have some fast guys, and probably the craziest thing that I've seen so far is when we played USF,” Miller said. “They took out their two inside linebackers and put, in, I don't know if they were nickel guys or whatever, just to be able to keep up with our backs.

"I've actually never seen that before. I think it was a pretty good technique, but I think that was probably the craziest thing I've seen so far.”