The four captains showed up on their day off on Sunday to talk to Scott Frost.

There was one question that the conversation was apparently built around: What could they do to help in getting this fixed? Frost was glad to have their company.

"I think the guys get it," Nebraska's head coach said during his Monday press conference. "That's all part of building a foundation I talked about. Sometimes it doesn't matter how much the coach says it. If it doesn't from in the locker room, there's not a lot of power to it. Now we got leaders that are excited to get some of these things changed and fixed."

Perhaps Frost also saw power in the fact his team also held a players-only meeting on their day off.

According to senior defensive end Freedom Akinmoladun, the players had a meeting with a "relaxed but understanding" tone a day after the Huskers dropped a 42-28 game to Purdue to fall to 0-4 on the season and give the program its eighth straight loss dating back to last year.

"It was just a group of understanding what we need to do, what our mission still is, and going out every single day of practice and getting better," Akinmoladun said.

If Saturday was another sick result for Frost's program, the coach struck an encouraged tone on Monday at some of what he's seen in the last 48 hours. Among the things he hasn't seen is anyone approach him at this point about a transfer, which is something to monitor now in college football with more and more players moving in-season due to the new four-game redshirt rule.

"People can read into a lot of stuff," he said. "These guys are fighting. And we're going to continue fighting."

A couple depth chart changes at certain spots in the last week from Frost and staff perhaps sent their own message to those who weren't understanding, or are still struggling to grasp, what this staff is asking out of them.

Clearly, there is much still to be solved.

"Sometimes when you're building a new house, you can't build it on a bad foundation or you won't have a house very long," Frost said. "We had some rot and some termites, and we still do. We got to get all that cleaned out. You can't build a structure on a foundation that's not solid. You'd like to get that foundation built quickly, and we're working on getting it built as quickly as we can, but there's still work to be done there.

"We're certainly not going to be ready to finish the house and put a penthouse in until that's all done."

Frost spoke on Sunday during his weekly television show about believing he has his team's full attention now. If the coach didn't get it, the results and missed opportunities of a month's worth of games have.

Nebraska's coach brought up warm-up drills during practices to make a point. During those drills, coaches make every skilled guy carry a ball while they're doing active stretching. Coaches go around trying to strip the ball out of their hands while they do it.

There was one practice earlier this fall where coaches stripped the ball 17 times during that stretch. That ain't good.

"So they were working on it, but I don't know how diligently they were working on it, until turnovers cost them two games," Frost said. "And then all of a sudden they realized maybe this thing is important. It didn't matter what we told them. Because we tried. Sometimes you got to get hit in the face to understand something."

On a similar note, the team practices turnover drills every day at the beginning of practice. One of those drills is a tip drill, where someone tips it while a player goes up full speed to try to high-point the catch and be the first one to the ball.

His players had been OK at it in practices, but not with the kind of diligence the coach wanted.

"Sure enough, the play shows up in (Saturday's) game," Frost said. "It happens. The ball's up in the air. If we go get it, it's probably 14-7 us. Instead it's 14-7 them. I think finally they realized, 'We better be not just doing this, but doing this with the intent of being great at it.' And it hasn't mattered that I've tried to tell them, or how much coaches have tried to tell them. You guys probably a lot of you have teenagers and kids. Sometimes you can tell them all you want. Until they experience it, it doesn't get changed.

Frost felt he saw a change in some of that on Monday. The coach thought he saw some guys practice in a way they haven't.

Just one day. Five days from a trip to Wisconsin that will challenge a team already struggling to stand on solid ground.

Still, it was something.

"It's way too late to have it happening," Frost said, "but I'm glad it's happening."