It really shouldn’t have taken one more critical, forehead-slapping, oh-no-he-didn’t moment to convince Nebraska that Scott Frost cannot do the job of coaching the Cornhuskers. They should have realized that after last season, a 3–9 flop filled with creative ways to lose games that ran his career record at the school to 15–29. But just to make his deficiencies crystal clear, Frost produced his most spectacular act of self-sabotage yet Saturday.
His Cornhuskers, having just taken a 28–17 lead on Northwestern with nine minutes and nine seconds left in the third quarter, Frost signed off on the preposterous decision to attempt an onside kick. It didn’t come close to succeeding, and it irrevocably turned the game in the Wildcats’ favor. They scored the final 14 points for a 31–28 victory in Ireland, in a classic Week Zero festival of the strange and silly.
Barring dramatic improvement that can be sustained for the rest of the season, that play could be remembered as the breaking point for Frost. The time that his last supporters bailed on him, as the pile of incompetent evidence grew a little taller. This was the cherry atop the manure sundae, as it were.
