Pitchin' with Pritch: Frost can turn this around
Bring on Michigan! Not sure the Huskers are ready for Michigan at Ann Arbor, but that is the next game on the schedule, and no one said it was going to be easy this year.
You have to wonder if the Football Gods are unhappy with you or what, but when your first game gets cancelled because of lightning, that could be a sign. So you miss your first game and you move to your second home opener without having a first one yet, and it is Troy University from Troy, Alabama. Troy University is in the Sun Belt conference, and through the years, Nebraska is 9-0 against Sun Belt teams. Troy got hammered by Boise State in their opening game, giving up a ton of points. So one would think that maybe the Huskers could regroup in their second game of the season and pull out a win.
Not so fast my friends, the Huskers couldn’t get out of their own way against Colorado, and they would be able to pull off the same move this week. Troy University is one of those teams no one really knows much about, but they have won double-digit games the last two years and defeated LSU last year. They got another power five win Saturday and picked up a check for $1.15 million for gas money to get back to Alabama.
The Huskers are 0-2 now and the last time they started 0-2 was in 1957. I was a sophomore in high school and most of the people reading this column probably were not born yet, so you don’t have to start counting back from 2018 to 1957 to know that was awhile back.
The Huskers had some of the same problems this past Saturday as they did vs Colorado, plus they were without their number one quarterback. But even though the backup quarterback threw some interceptions, you can’t put all the blame on Andrew Bunch. For the most part, I thought he did a pretty good job for being in the position he has found himself in the last three or four weeks of the season.
The defensive backs have made some terrible miscues in the first two games that have caused bigger problems than Bunch’s interceptions. Coach Frost made the comment, that “it might get worse before it gets better.” Coach Frost has been here before, and I have confidence he will get it turned around. This is not a sprint, it is a marathon job he has here.
The players are going to have to get better, work harder, keep focused and stay the course. Frost has proven he can turn a program around and he has been part of plenty of outstanding football programs and has the experience to get it done. It would have been nice to have Adrian Martinez for the game but they didn’t. Coach Frost commented, “No, Adrian wasn’t ready to go today. He actually looked really good in warm-ups, but we were just worried about it. Look he is going to be here a long time, and our decision will be made based on his long-term health more than anything. That wasn’t an option.” I think it is evident that although they wanted to have all their players ready for this game, it is more important to have players, especially players with Martinez’s skill level, around for more important games down the road.
So bring on Michigan and let’s see what happens next week. I am sure they will keep on working on things that have been causing them problems. They will try to eliminate the self-inflicted problems that are occurring and see if there will be improvement in their overall game. I would bet that a win over Michigan will cause most of the bad memories of the first two games to go away.