UCF’s Frost credits his mentors for his success
ORLANDO – Tampa Bay Buccaneers assistant coach Mike Tomlin advised Scott Frost to go into coaching in 2003, the final year of Frost’s NFL career, telling the reserve defensive back that coaching, like playing, would give him the opportunity to compete. Frost heard the message, digested it but didn’t immediately embrace the recommendation.
So he went back home, to Nebraska, and for a year maintained a retiree’s routine: golf one day, pheasant hunting the next, unless both could be crammed into the same morning and afternoon. He even spent a week working at an investment firm in Omaha, at the end of which he told his employer: I don’t know if I can do this. I figured, his former boss replied, laughing.
A call from another former Tampa assistant, Raheem Morris, brought Frost back into the game, offering the
chance to serve as a graduate assistant working with the defensive backs at Kansas State. Then it was off for two years at Northern Iowa. Then seven seasons at Oregon, the final three as offensive coordinator, which led Frost to Central Florida, where in the span of just two years he’s developed into the musthave coaching prospect on the Group of Five ranks — drawing interest from his alma mater, Nebraska, along with Florida, Tennessee and others.
It might seem quick. Too quick, even, for a 42-year-old relative neophyte to have gone from hunting pheasants around Wood River, Neb., into the crosshairs of college football’s historic elite. He’s too inexperienced, Frost’s detractors say, too unproven. If overblown, there’s a nugget of truth in the sentiment: UCF is one thing, a Nebraska or Florida another.
“Not too long ago he was in the same situation that we’re in,” UCF freshman wide receiver Otis Anderson said. “He’s still very young, he can still really relate to us.”
But Frost has been trained for this moment. From his playing career through his term in coaching, Frost has learned this trade from some of football’s brightest minds, in the NFL and college. Through this experience, he’s weaved together an approach — seen most clearly in his offensive scheme — that is both unique and transferable, meaning the style used to bring UCF to the forefront of the New Year’s Six bowl race might just work to similar effect on the Power Five ranks.
“He just has a great connection with football players,” UCF athletics director Danny White said. “And it comes from a place of so much credibility because of what he’s accomplished as a player, the coaches he’s learned from.”
He was recruited to Stanford by Bill Walsh, the legendary former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. He was brought back to Nebraska by Tom Osborne, his mentor and “hero in coaching,” Frost said. He spent two seasons under Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick with the New York Jets. Another year with Jon Gruden, Tomlin and Morris with the Buccaneers. Four years with Chip Kelly. Three under Mark Helfrich. Even Frost’s parents, Larry and Carol, served as his high school coaches.
“I could think of something for every coach,” Frost said.
Walsh showed how intelligence and football could coexist, at the time a foreign, even revolutionary, concept. Even in the middle of competition, Walsh exuded a sense of calm, Frost said. He tucked that lesson away.
“Watching him operate and keep his cool no matter what I think rubbed off on me,” Frost said.
Parcells and Belichick preached consistency and non-negotiable expectations: This is what you’re supposed to do, they’d tell the Jets, and anything less is unacceptable. If overpowering at first, Frost saw how a concrete and unassailable message could get an entire organization “pulling in the same direction.”
Gruden’s commitment to his craft rubbed off on Frost, who recalled an anecdote: Flying out of Tampa about 4 one morning during the offseason, he went into the team’s dark and unlit locker rooms and bumped into Gruden, who was just entering the building to break down game film — it “scared the hell out of me,” Frost remembered.
On that same staff, he admired Tomlin’s ability to communicate with his defensive backs.
“His ability to treat guys like men and not like he was their superior. Playing for him was the best experience of my NFL career,” Frost said. “I didn’t have a great NFL career. I think it could’ve gone a lot better. But I don’t know if it could’ve gone any better from a standpoint of learning the game and playing for really good coaches.”
But his greatest, most impactful mentors have come in college. One is Kelly, who hired Frost as Oregon’s receivers coach in 2009. It’s from Kelly that Frost learned an offense: an uptempo, spread-based blueprint since tweaked and tailored to fit Frost’s own preference and the UCF personnel. Kelly’s replacement, Mark Helfrich, didn’t hesitate to promote Frost to offensive coordinator — and immediately allowed him to call plays, a major turning point in his career.
“Him hiring me at Oregon and letting me learn his scheme, that changed my trajectory as a coach,” Frost said. “My time at Oregon with Chip, and then taking his offense and continuing to evolve it, that’s really what’s gotten us to where we are.”
Then there’s Osborne, whose impact can be seen in every aspect of Frost’s program at UCF. His offense has woven in pieces of Osborne’s scheme at Nebraska. The way the Knights practice, lift weights, train, compete — all are borrowed from Osborne’s blueprint. The feeling is mutual: Osborne “thinks the world of ” Frost, said White.
As a player, Frost would hear from Osborne if he didn’t cut block on the Cornhuskers’ toss plays or went out of bounds instead of lowering his shoulder along the sideline. As a coach, he finds himself echoing Osborne’s message: The first thing UCF skill players learn, for example, isn’t route trees but blocking schemes.
“I think those things have given us an edge, and those are definitely things that we’ve gotten from Nebraska,” Frost said. “I think the toughness that he brought to our program — making our team go live in the week, making it competitive, emphasizing everybody, including the quarterback, being tough — those things rubbed off on me.”
A picture begins to come into focus: Frost isn’t your everyday second-year coach. Another prospect might need more time; the inexperience could scare major-conference programs away, and maybe deservedly so.
But Frost has been taking notes, evaluating ideas, honing his technique and developing his own style for decades — with help from the defining coaches of this era. It’s taken him this far, rocketing both Frost’s own stock and that of UCF in the span of two seasons. It’s also prepared him for what comes next.
“Without that experience I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am now,” he said.