Armstrong shows grit in leading Huskers past DucksArmstrong shows grit in leading Huskers past Ducks
Football

Armstrong shows grit in leading Huskers past Ducks

By Brian Rosenthal / Huskers.com

Tommy Armstrong Jr. harkened on what coaches had been preaching throughout the week as Nebraska prepared to face Oregon.

The Huskers would need to play every single minute, every single snap to beat the mighty Ducks.

No sloughing allowed. It can’t happen.

So forgive Armstrong if he missed a play.

“It was a first thing for me,” Armstrong said of leg cramps that hindered him throughout the second half on a sunny, warm day. “I thought I could tough it out the first time it happened, and then I tried to run off the field, and then all the sudden my leg just locked up on me.”

To nobody’s surprise on the team, Armstrong, who twice left the field with severe cramps but missed only one play, toughed it out.

“I’ve never seen Tommy get knocked down and not get back up,” Nebraska safety and senior captain Nate Gerry said. “That’s one thing that we all respect out of him, because we know if it comes down to crunch time, we can count on number 4.”

Sure thing.

His legs may have felt like Jell-O, but Armstrong wasn’t complaining too bad after his 34-yard touchdown run on a quarterback draw with 2:29 to play gave Nebraska the lead.

The Huskers’ defense responded, as senior linebacker Michael Rose-Ivey tackled quarterback Dakota Prukop on fourth down to seal Nebraska’s 35-32 victory over No. 22 Oregon on Saturday before a charged-up crowd of 90,414 – the 350th consecutive sellout at Memorial Stadium.

“It’s humongous. I was humongous for us to come out with a win,” Nebraska senior receiver Jordan Westerkamp said. “It should put us in the rankings now, hopefully. It should give us some nation-wide respect. It should give us some momentum that we can take into conference play and get after it.”

They have their senior quarterback to thank.

Armstrong was 17-of-33 passing for 200 yards and three touchdowns. His pivotal fourth-and-9 strike to Westerkamp to convert a first down came two plays before his game-winning touchdown.

Behind a push from center Dylan Utter and a cut block by running back Devine Ozigbo on an Oregon linebacker, Armstrong saw plenty of green space ahead of him.

“I found myself one-on-one with the safety, made him miss, and tried my best to get in the end zone,” Armstrong said. “My legs were hurting a lot, but those guys helped me out when it came to pushing me to try to finish the game.

“That’s what a family and a brotherhood is about, putting your hands on each other’s shoulders when you need help to push throughout the game. Those guys did a great job of helping me out.”

The cramping came as a surprise to Armstrong, who said he can’t ever remember having such issues, and to his coaches, who didn’t shy away from putting the ball in the hands of their senior play-maker.

“We really had some good looks and we were outnumbering them on a couple of those draws,” Nebraska offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf said, “and I wanted to keep running it and he said, ‘I’m good.’ I said, ‘OK, we’re going to stick with it then.' But it was a deal where he kind of just fought through and got fluids at the breaks.”

Armstrong rushed for 95 yards, most coming on draws, but beat Oregon with his arm, too. The draw play for the touchdown doesn’t happen if he doesn’t deliver a perfect strike to Westerkamp on fourth-and-9. The play gained 14 yards to the Oregon 38-yard line.

“We had (Westerkamp) on basically a couple of hook routes early and then we ran a dig on it and kind of changed it up,” Langsdorf said. “We needed to buy a little time for him to get open and work. That nickel back covering him was really good. He ran a great route, got himself open and threw a strike.”

Westerkamp, who also hauled in a 3-yard touchdown pass on a fade route with 5 seconds to play in the first half, came through again, as expected.

“I knew I could break the guy down and the line held up awesome,” Westerkamp said of his fourth-down reception.

“Tommy zinged it in there. I always say he’s the biggest competitor on the field all the time. The guy’s got so much heart. Nothing was going to stop him from coming back out there.”

Gerry himself battled through illness. He said he was “throwing up all morning" and he left the postgame news conference with two bottles of Gatorade.

“It was awful,” Gerry said. “But I had to do it. It was a big game.”

Gerry responded with a team-leading nine tackles, two for loss, and a pass breakup in the first quarter that initially looked like it would be a certain touchdown.

Oregon scored on the drive, anyway, but the play helped end a streak of 82 straight games in which Oregon had thrown a touchdown pass. All five of the Ducks’ scores came on runs.

But with Memorial Stadium at a fever pitch, the Blackshirts held Oregon out of field goal range in the final 2:29.

The Ducks didn’t advance past the Nebraska 48.

“Very confident,” Nebraska defensive coordinator Mark Banker said of his defense on the final drive. “We had been through so much during the course of the game, shooting ourselves in the foot. We talked about what we were going to do when we took the field with the lead.

“Our offense did a great job all day keeping us in the game. The players played their hearts out. They stayed with it, even though things didn’t go our way all the time. We gave up big plays at the wrong time but they kept coming back and finishing how we needed to. That’s a great win for that group of guys in the locker room.”

And even though he’s a defensive coach, Banker fully understood and appreciated the role Armstrong played in a game the Huskers rallied after trailing by 13 points, and rallied again after losing a 28-20 lead.

“I know one thing, the kid’s got a heart of a lion, and you can’t take that away from him,” Banker said. “He’s an awesome competitor. That’s all you can ever ask.”

Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal