Skip to main content
Join Now
Team Avatar
Nebraska

Bill Moos admits he interviewed Chip Kelly for Nebraska head coach job before hiring Scott Frost

275133747_4796292347117549_592518599057046758_nby: Jonathan Wagner02/11/26j_wags74

Bill Moos was hired to be the Nebraska AD in 2017. It didn’t take him long to realize why he was there. The Cornhuskers needed a football coach.

Of course, the hire ended up being Scott Frost, who left after two seasons at UCF to lead Nebraska. Fresh off of leading UCF to an undefeated 13-0 season, Frost was a top candidate across the country.

“I was hired to hire the football coach,” Moos said in an interview on Early Break. “And it didn’t take long for me to realize who I was there to hire – Scott Frost.”

Frost’s tenure didn’t go as planned. He went 4-8 in 2018 and improved to 5-7 in 2019, but it went downhill from there. Nebraska was 3-5 in 2020, 3-9 in 2021 and 1-2 in 2022 before Frost was fired. He left with a 16-31 overall record, going 10-26 against Big Ten opponents.

Moos revealed he interviewed Chip Kelly at Nebraska before hiring Frost

Moos revealed on Wednesday that he interviewed another intriguing candidate for the job before ultimately going with Frost. That would be Chip Kelly.

“I went under the radar and interviewed Chip Kelly at his kitchen table before the season was over,” said Moos. “I’ve been known to do those things. He would’ve been a good fit in a lot of ways.

“You guys in the media probably wouldn’t have liked him, but he wins football games and he knows how to do it. That was met with resistance.”

Kelly, the former Oregon head coach from 2009-2012, had made the jump to the NFL by that point. He was the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles from 2013-2015, going 26-21 before being fired prior to the Eagles’ regular season finale. He was then hired by the San Francisco 49ers, going 2-14 in 2016 before being fired again.

The 2017 season was spent in ESPN studios for Kelly, being outside of football, before moving back to college. Instead of landing at Nebraska, he was hired at UCLA in 2018, where he was through the 2023 season before stepping down and becoming the Ohio State offensive coordinator prior to the 2024 campaign.

Kelly spent the 2025 season as the OC for the Las Vegas Raiders before being fired. He’s now the OC at Northwestern.

Hiring Kelly would have been an interesting move for Nebraska, but we’ll never know how it would’ve played out. It’s an intriguing what-if scenario to look back on now.