ORLANDO — The day he was rehired, Scott Frost cautioned fans not to expect another undefeated UCF football season right away. Following their 34-20 road loss Sept. 27 to Kansas State, the immediate challenge is to avoid a downward spiral, easier said than done for the Knights since joining the Big 12.
UCF (3-1, 0-1) endured five-game losing streaks in each of Gus Malzahn’s final two years, and it has an 0-7 record overall in the month of October. The Knights will look to buck the trend when Kansas (3-2, 1-1) makes its first trip to the Acrisure Bounce House on Oct. 4.
Frost commended the Knights’ determination to fight back from a 21-point deficit this past weekend, particularly the toughness of quarterbacks Tayven Jackson and Jacurri Brown, both of whom sustained shoulder injuries. He believes that spirit will carry through conference play, though results are impossible to predict week-to-week.
“Sometimes when those things happen, it’s just because you’re losing close games, and you’re fighting. That’s football; you win some, you lose some,” Frost said. “Other times when that happens to teams, guys can kind of cash it in a little bit. I don’t expect this team to do that.
“That doesn’t mean we’ll win the next one; it doesn’t mean we won’t. This league is going to be a battle every week. But I feel great about the players we have on this team. We’re going to keep fighting.”
Junior linebacker Lewis Carter said the Knights will learn from their mistakes and “flush” the previous result. Redshirt junior center Carter Miller put an emphasis on the details, such as the complex twists and fronts Kansas State’s defensive line ran.
“You’ve got to put your ego down,” Miller said. “You’ve got to go into the film room and say, ‘Hey, I messed this up, I messed (that) up.’ And you’ve got to correct what you messed up, the little things.”
As for the availability of UCF’s quarterbacks, Frost said the situation remains ‘TBD,’ though he has an idea for who will be ready to take first-team reps for Monday night’s practice.
“I’m not trying to give you the run-around. I’ve got to see how they operate this week,” Frost said. “It’s great that we have Cam (Fancher) ready to go again, too. We’ll figure that out as the week goes along.”
Kansas handed UCF the first of those seven straight October losses two years ago, rushing for nearly 400 yards in a 51-22 blowout. The Jayhawks did so without the services of their starting quarterback, Jalon Daniels — one of the Big 12’s most accomplished and experienced signal-callers.
Daniels, a sixth-year senior, has completed 66.9% of his attempts for 1,262 yards with 16 touchdowns and just two interceptions through five games. He’s added 214 yards and another score on the ground.
“He’s really good, watching him on tape,” Frost said. “He can throw at an elite level, and he can run at an elite level. I think they do a great job, scheme-wise, with him. They’re probably going to get theirs to some degree, and we’ve got to try to limit that. And we definitely need to be better on offense. It’s hard to take everything away from a player of that caliber, so we’ve got to do the best we can to contain him.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: UCF football aims to avoid another October Big 12 meltdown after Kansas State loss
Reporting by Chris Boyle, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
