Paul Finebaum: It looked like Scott Frost was coaching Nebraska during Week 1

Nebraska started off the Matt Rhule in disappointment, as the Cornhuskers lost in come-from-behind fashion to Minnesota 13-10 on Thursday.

Rhule provided the Nebraska program with new light and hope this offseason following six straight losing seasons, but Thursday night gave Cornhusker fans a feeling that’s all too familiar with them, which college football analyst Paul Finebaum referred to in a recent conversation with ESPN’s Matt Barrie.

“Matt help me with something because I watched the end of the game Thursday night,” Finebaum said. “I thought Nebraska made a coaching change. Why was Scott Frost coaching at the end of that game? Because it did not look any different than what we saw last year.”

Thursday’s loss for Nebraska served as their 14th in one-score games since the 2021 season, with 13 of the losses under the head coaching direction of Frost. There’s no question that the ability to finish games has been a problem in Lincoln, with a 14-2 record in those one-score games since 2021, and unfortunately that trend did not change in Rhule’s debut.

The Cornhuskers played superb defense throughout the night, holding the Golden Gophers to just three points the entire game until Minnesota scored a touchdown and a field goal to win the game in the last three minutes of the contest.

“It was so heartbreaking to watch because we know because we’ve been in this industry and covered it for such a long time, especially college football,” Barrie added. “We know the heartache that happens in this sport, I still have scar tissue from the Rose Bowl in 1997 with Arizona State and Ohio State, we know this. But the fact that Nebraska fans had to have a game stripped from them literally in the final couple of minutes, to go through that again after going through it during the Scott Frost era, to now have to take it against an old classic rival in Colorado.”

Nebraska will have to turn things around fast, as they face one of the hottest teams in the country in Colorado.

The Buffaloes shocked the nation as 21-point underdogs in the head coaching debut of Deion Sanders, defeating TCU 45-42 about seven months after the Horned Frogs appeared in the national championship game.

There’s no doubt that Sanders and Rhule had opposite head coaching debuts for their respective programs, but hopefully, the Cornhuskers can have a short memory and rally as they face the Buffaloes this Saturday at 12 p.m. ET in a matchup airing on FOX.

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