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BIG TEN CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYS

July 18, 2019

Scott Frost

Chicago, Illinois

SCOTT FROST: Appreciate you guys. Sorry we're a little bit late. Our plane got diverted. We're here now. Spent a little time at a hotel in Gurnee selling shower curtain rings, and we finally made it. Got a group I'm proud of here today, I think three young guys that represent our state and our university and our team very well.

We've done a lot of work. Really excited about the season, and can't wait to get it started.

Q. Scott, since you arrived in Lincoln, you've made Michigan very much a priority in recruiting and talking to high school coaches and players. You're making significant inroads. Could you talk about the state of Michigan in your recruiting philosophy, please?
SCOTT FROST: I don't know if we'd identified any particular places and made them priorities. We're going to go where the players are. I don't care where they are, if they're in Jamaica or Kazakhstan, we're going. If they're in Michigan, so be it. We're going to come up and try to get the best players we can.

Our coaches do a really good job. I think they're honest. They're straightforward. They do a good job with coaches and kids, and I feel real good about our recruiting strategy and our ability to produce in the recruiting area because of the people we put on the road.

Q. Scott, what's the biggest thing you took away from last year -- that you and your staff took away and you hope that could help and lead to bigger and better things this fall?
SCOTT FROST: You know, I think everybody in the state and in our building were happy with the progress that we made and kind of the results at the end of the season. And it was a long, hard road through that time. There was a lot of things that had to get changed, fixed, adjusted. We're still working on it. It's a never-ending process. It's never going to be perfect. It's never going to be done. It's never going to be complete.

But we were certainly farther down the road at the end of the season than we were at the beginning. I think our team did a really good job of picking up from that point and moving forward. Love the attitude in our locker room right now and the work ethic that they've been showing all off-season.

We cost ourselves arguably a bunch of games just because of those things, mentalities and attitudes and decisions, and hopefully we have a lot of that fixed.

Q. In your second year at UCF, you obviously had a tremendous amount of success. Now you enter the second year at Nebraska, and a lot of people think you can win the west division. Do you or your players feel that same kind of level to deliver that same kind of success you had in year 2 at UCF?
SCOTT FROST: Well, we coached a lot of really good kids and really good players in Orlando. We've got a lot of really good kids and really good players in Lincoln. Those two teams have nothing to do with one another, and I'm never going to make any comparisons. I love where I am. I'm the coach at Nebraska.

We're concerned about this team. I love the progress this team has made. But you guys get to make all the predictions and prognostications. I get to coach the team, so I don't know about any results. I don't think our kids feel pressure. They're just excited to play. We're better. We're better than we were a year ago, and the rest of it we're going to have to earn.

Q. Last year you said to all the other 13 coaches you'd better get us now. Do you feel even more strongly about that even after season 1?
SCOTT FROST: I don't remember saying that directly to the coaches, but I think any time you take over a business, an organization, a sports team, year 2 get easier than year 1. There's a lot of groundwork that had to be laid. Nebraska is one of the teams that for a long time was one of the blue bloods of college football and winning as many game as anybody. That wasn't built overnight. It's not going to be built overnight again. I have a strong sense that we're way ahead of where we were a year ago, and I think we'll keep improving from here.

I think we'll be a better team every time we get to play one of the teams that are on our schedule.

Q. Specifically, how far do you expect your quarterback play with Adrian Martinez to be compared to where it was a year ago with everything he learned last year?
SCOTT FROST: Yeah, I wouldn't trade our guy for anybody in the country at that position, at the quarterback position. On top of being a great player, he's just a great individual, exactly what we're looking for to run our offense. We're probably going to go as far as he can take us this year.

I played the position, not as well as he plays it, but I played the position. And from personal experience and coaching experience, I think particularly at that position, your biggest jump comes from your first year of playing to your second year of playing, and I've seen that happen with some of the guys that I've coached, as well.

As good as he was last year, if we get a similar jump, we're going to be really strong at that spot.

Q. At the end of last year, you said there were teams in the Big Ten that were bigger, faster, and stronger. How do you feel about your team in that area heading into year 2, and how much more of that foundation do you feel like you have laid heading into this year?
SCOTT FROST: Probably of all the areas we've improved, strength and conditioning across the board on our team has improved the most. It's fun to go down and watch in the weight room and see what our guys are doing. We were kind of starting from square one when Zach Duval and our strength staff, who are as good as there is out there, got ahold of our guys. We couldn't even really do the workouts at that point that he wanted them to do because I don't think they were prepared for that. He didn't think they were prepared for that. So we were really starting at go a year and a half ago.

To look now and see what our guys are doing in the weight room and really just looking at them when you walk by them and seeing them in the locker room, in the hallways, they look completely different. This is a big, physical league. There's a lot of big, physical teams, a lot of really good teams, and regardless of your scheme on offense or defense, you can't get pushed around, you can't get outworked, and you can't get outsized. We made a lot of strides to catch up, and I think that will show up on the field.

Q. Can you speak to the choice to bring Adrian to an event like this and how you see him handling a lot of the pressures that he's going to have as just a sophomore this year in your program?
SCOTT FROST: Yeah, it was a pretty easy choice, honestly, to bring Adrian, because number one, he deserves it. He's as good a player as we have, and I think as good a player as a lot of people have around the country, so he deserves to be here. Just letting you guys in on a little secret, usually we would bring seniors. We're not going to have any seniors, or very many seniors on offense this year. Coaches also kind of think we've got to bring a guy that is going to speak well to represent us and say and do the right things, and he's the poster child for that. He deserves to be in the spotlight. He can handle it, he's ready for it, and he's here.

Q. You lost some key guys on the offensive line from last year, some seniors. What have you seen from those guys maybe in the off-season, and what maybe concerns do you have about depth and experience, especially at center?
SCOTT FROST: Yeah, center, left guard, we're waiting to see which guys emerge. There's going to be a few competitions on our team for some spots. I think most of the spots on the team are pretty clear-cut who the top guys are going to be. But that can shake out in fall camp, too.

We still have a few holes, but most teams do. We still have depth issues at a few spots. But show me a team that doesn't.

We're like anybody else. We're going to need to stay healthy this year and have a few guys step up. We feel really good about some spots, and losing those two interior guys certainly didn't help. But we have some good talented young guys that I think have the potential to be even better. We just need that to come to fruition quickly.

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