By Brian Rosenthal / Huskers.com
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Nebraska had a football team with nine wins, a defense that had drastically improved in preventing big plays and an outside chance of winning a Big Ten Conference West Division championship.
Problem was, that particular team was nowhere to be found Friday afternoon in Kinnick Stadium.
As troublesome as a lopsided loss to a superior Ohio State team was three weeks ago, No. 17 Nebraska’s 40-10 defeat to unranked Iowa in the regular-season finale was far more disappointing and frustrating because, frankly, nobody saw it coming.
Explaining how or why it happened may take longer than the trip home home for Husker fans headed west on jammed Interstate 80.
“With anything, it’s a combination of things,” Nebraska senior linebacker Josh Banderas said. “We didn’t play how we played all season. We didn’t play our kind of football, whether it be discipline or effort or just straight assignment.
“We just didn’t play our kind of football we’re capable of playing.”
Now, Nebraska (9-3, 6-3 Big Ten) must wait until Dec. 4 to learn of its bowl destination – which, in and of itself, is a marked improvement from last season, when the Huskers were uncertain of postseason play with a 5-7 record.
To that end, what happened Friday can’t unravel the many positives that have come in the second year of the Mike Riley regime.
“Absolutely not, absolutely not,” Banderas said. “Compare last year. Look at how far we’ve come in a year’s time span and all the things we’ve had to go through. It sucks going out like this as a senior, but at the same time I know we’re leaving these younger guys in good hands.
“We still have a bowl game, and we’re going to finish how we want to finish. It’s just another bump in the road.”
A big, unexpected, mindboggling bump.
“That was, in just about all fashions, very disappointing,” Riley said. “It’s very obvious what happened. Everyone saw it. We gave up big plays. We didn’t really sustain anything early (on offense) and all over the place on special teams we lost field position.
“There wasn’t any phase of the game that looked any good today.”
Iowa (8-4, 6-3) gashed Nebraska with two big plays on back-to-back snaps in the first quarter to amass all the points it would need.
The talk all week from Nebraska’s defense was not letting the Hawkeyes do what they did in last season’s 28-20 victory in Lincoln – run the same play multiple times for minimal yardage and then bust a big gain on that very same play.
Yet that’s exactly what happened when running back Akrum Wadley cut back, caught defenders out of their gaps and raced 75 yards untouched for a touchdown.
“Credit to them. That’s their scheme,” Banderas said. “They’re going to kind of zone you off and wait for a hole. They found their holes early. We made some corrections and ended up keeping it more at bay later in the game.
“All it takes is those couple. As you can see, it kind of sent the game into a spiral.”
The next time Iowa touched the ball, quarterback C.J. Beathard hit Riley McCarron over the middle, and McCarron, too, went untouched 77 yards for a touchdown.
“They’re a good group, but by no means were they as good as the score,” Nebraska safety Nate Gerry said of the Hawkeyes. “I thought a similar offense to Wisconsin, we held our ground against them. I don’t think they were 30 points better than us.”
In the second quarter, LeShun Daniels ran 56 yards, and scored from 4 yards three plays later for a 20-3 Iowa lead.
“It’s almost a shame how I talked about how explosive plays affect games,” Riley said, “because it was just what we needed to do to win this game, and we gave up big plays.”
Why?
“The first answer right off the top is – I don’t want to sound overly technical – but we lost leverage on the football badly,” Riley said. “In other words, we over ran it. It obviously has to do with keeping the ball in front of you with leverage so you can make a play and not allow a cutback, and from there it has to do with pursuit angles with everybody else.”
Nebraska’s offense, meanwhile, sputtered behind a banged-up quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr.
While Iowa produced big play after big play, the Huskers never had a gain of longer than 19 yards.
Armstrong started despite a hamstring injury that sidelined him last week against Maryland. He said he felt OK … until he absorbed his first hard hit of the game in the first quarter. Iowa recognized Armstrong wasn’t his normal mobile self, and capitalized.
His backup, Ryker Fyfe, was also limited last week after having surgery on his non-throwing hand. Riley said Armstrong was closer to full strength than was Fyfe, who entered on the game’s final series, the game’s outcome not in doubt.
Nebraska finished with 217 yards of offense.
“You know, I think Iowa had as much to do with it as anything,” Riley said. “Now, certainly Tommy wasn’t 100 percent, nor was Ryker, and all that, but with the overall picture of what it looked today, we can’t come close to using that as a reason or excuse.”
Armstrong was 13-of-35 passing for 125 yards and a touchdown, a 13-yard strike to Stanley Morgan Jr. on a fourth-and-10 play in the third quarter. That cut Iowa’s lead to 26-10.
A handful of Armstrong’s incompletions were on deep balls.
“We had a bunch of guys there on one-on-ones,” Armstrong said. “I just couldn’t get the ball there. It was either overthrown or I was late on the ball.”
Nebraska will take some time off before resuming bowl game preparations. Riley said “it’s all too raw to think about” after Friday’s outcome, yet the opportunity for a 10-win season and a chance to atone for Friday's subpar performance should be motivating factors.
Eventually.
“It’s hard to assess the whole picture after that performance,” Riley said. “We’ll get on with it. We’ll get a bowl game and we’ll feel good about that, but there’s not a great feeling right now about a summary from this season at this point.”
Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.