What to make of Nebraska’s disastrous loss to Illinois | College Football Enquirer Podcast

Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss Scott Frost’s Nebraska team’s ugly showing against new head coach Bret Bielema and his Illinois squad, and what to make of the future for the Cornhuskers.

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DAN WETZEL: Nebraska lost by 8, 30 to 22, to Illinois. There was-- I don't know what you take out of this for Nebraska. I mean, the coaching was terrible. The execution was terrible. Mental errors. Maybe most concerning, there was just nobody any good on the team. Like, when they were coming back, like, their comeback attempt, you're like, who-- Like, there's no separation on the wide receivers. There's no game-breaking talent. I mean, it's four recruiting classes in. Bret Bielema, who we'll talk to-- this is the beauty of having Bret Bielema back in college football-- this is an incredible quote, "The only guy that really could beat us, we thought, was number 2," which is Martinez. And I think that's 100% truth. I think they looked at this game, and were like, these guys are not any good. They've got a quarterback, and if we can stop him, we can win this football game, even though we ain't any good.

PAT FORDE: Yeah. Yeah.

DAN WETZEL: This is a meltdown right here. This was ugly.

PAT FORDE: The fact that, you know, all of the talk before this season, oh, this Scott Frost's best team, you know, they're gonna be so much better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and, if anything, they were as bad as ever, if not worse. The offseason emphasis on special teams, oh, well, you field a punt on the 1 and get a safety. You miss two extra points. Adrian Martinez is our four-year guy at quarterback. He fumbles, and it turns into a scoop and score. And, Dan, to your larger point, that's the truth, is their running backs are pedestrian, their receivers don't drop the ball, but they don't separate. And that's the thing with Adrian Martinez. His best talent is running the ball. As a drop-back quarterback, he's sub-average. He holds the ball too long. He doesn't see things well. He's tentative, and he doesn't have great mechanics or great accuracy.

That program is a mess, and here's the thing. Frost, as we know, is prickly and cocky, and he got his hand caught in the cookie jar with these improper practices that there's now an NCAA investigation, and got trotted out in front of the media, and he was embarrassed about it, and so he spent last week trying to be Bill Belichick with the media in Lincoln. He had two press conferences, and spoke for a total of, like, seven minutes, and every answer was this snippy, hands on hips, we're just getting ready for Saturday. We're just preparing for Saturday. We're just preparing-- I mean, just, like, purposefully being a dick. And guess what? Bill Belichick can do that, because he wins Super Bowls! Scott Frost ain't won jack at Nebraska! You might need a couple people in your corner, and that media corps is not exactly a bunch of ravenous jackals, but they're on your case now, brother.

PETE THAMEL: So, this is what I credit Bret Bielema for here. Like, it was classic Bill Belichick, hey, let's just let the other team screw it up. Give Bielema credit. He just sat back, played basic, conservative football, let Scott Frost screw it up, and Scott Frost screwed it up. That was really how I saw that game unfold, from that perspective.

DAN WETZEL: What can Nebraska-- Like, if Scott Frost doesn't work, I mean, we can pick on him now, and say he's not doing a good job, but he was a no-brain hire.

PAT FORDE: Yeah.

DAN WETZEL: The guy was the hottest coach in the country at the time. He went 13-0 at UCF, declared themselves national champs. Like again, alum, the whole thing. This is gonna work. If anything's gonna work, this is it. And it isn't even close to working. This is the risk of leaving the Big 12, when you're going 9-3, 10-2, you're in big games, it's easier to get recruits. You lost your ties to Texas, because you're not playing down there three times a year. You're just another team in the Big Ten with a huge stadium, but you're farther away, and even colder than the other places. The Big Ten West is, like, this-- We need to have another B pot, right? I mean, it's a dogfight to get the respectability, because there's a lot of decent programs now.

PETE THAMEL: But you are definitively behind Illinois, having lost to them two years in a row.

PAT FORDE: Yeah.

- Like, if that doesn't extinguish hope, I don't know what does.

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