The hype surrounding Scott Frost's second season in Lincoln is alive and well.

Former NFL quarterback turned college football analyst Dan Orlovsky believes the preseason Big Ten West favorites are a legitimate national championship contender this fall, acknowledging Nebraska as his darkhorse Playoff pick during Wednesday's appearance on Get Up!.

"Give me the frosted tips of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, they’re back,” Orlovsky said, before Booger McFarland picked Texas and Marcus Spears landed on Oregon. “They started 0-6 last year, but in that start, they had four really close games that ended up being losses. They’re quarterback, Adrian Martinez, should be on the short list for the Heisman Trophy, 2,400 yards passing, 800 rushing. They got six starters back on defense.

"And guys — I don’t find a tough game on their schedule on the road. Ohio State comes into them, Iowa comes to them, Wisconsin comes to them. Folks, Nebraska can be a national College Football Playoff contender.”

The Huskers, expected to be ranked inside the preseason Top 20 in next month's first Associated Press rankings, went 4-8 last fall during Frost's first season but made noticeable strides during the second half of the slate.

Martinez added muscle in the offseason and will play at 225 pounds this fall, which should help him absorb hits in a run-geared attack, he says.

“Running the ball is part of my game and it is part of our offense,” Martinez said at Big Ten Media Days. “I don’t think that’s going anywhere. That’s not going to change. I put on some more healthy weight. I think I’m built better to handle it this year. If coach Frost wants me to run the ball 40 times then I’ll do whatever.”

Martinez's shift of attention to the weight room and changing his body has been part of a team-wide focus on improving overall strength.

“If you just walked in and saw our team right now compared to where it was a year ago,” Frost said. “Some of the kids don't even look like the same kids. And we're starting to look like a Nebraska football team supposed to look.”

Nebraska's September home game vs. Ohio State, potentially the first time College GameDay comes to Lincoln in more than a decade, recently topped our preseason "10 games with upset alert written all over them" list at 247Sports.

Frost and the Huskers have welcomed lofty national expectations with open arms this summer and aren't backing down from the idea Nebraska could challenge for double-digit wins and be ahead of schedule during this rebuild.

“I know we're better than we were a year ago,” Frost said at Big Ten Media Days. “But we still have to go out and earn anything. Picks are picks, guesses are guesses 90 percent of the time you guys are wrong when you guess things. But we're excited. I think there's gonna be some confidence that comes along with that. I don't think we have the type of team that's going to get distracted by that.”