You could be forgiven for letting go for a few seconds. For thinking it was finally going to happen. After all, Iowa had just muffed a punt, allowing Nebraska to score another touchdown for a 24-0 lead early in the 3rd quarter of the annual Black Friday contest.
Don’t feel bad if you forgot that Nebraska doesn’t win these games, doesn’t feel late-season joy.
But a 24-point second-half lead? Not even Iowa’s awful offense, with their backup quarterback, backup tight end, and nepotism-fueled offensive-coordinator situation, could score 24 points in less than 30 minutes, right?
Right?
Well, if there’s one college football program capable of allowing such a Hawkeye comeback, it’s Nebraska.
As they have done for many years now, the Huskers left that door open instead of slamming it shut. NU’s offense stopped bombing the ball and went into a shell, attempting only six passes and managing just 48 total yards after building that 24-point lead. They also allowed Iowa to bust their longest run and three longest passes of the game after reaching that 24-point peak.
Nebraska has almost perfected the art of turning wins into losses.
If you’re reading this, you know by now that the Huskers uncharacteristically held on for a 24-17 victory, almost surely denying Iowa a trip to the Big Ten Championship game in the process. (A win by either Purdue or Illinois on Saturday seals their fate.)
This game went against the grain and according to plan. It surprised nobody while somehow shocking everybody.
Iowa has never come back from a 24-point deficit in school history, yet got to within one score because Nebraska gives up double-digit leads like it’s their job.
The top-ten Hawkeye defense allowed Nebraska to score 24 points, joining Michigan and Ohio State as the only teams to hang more than 13 points on Iowa this season. Meanwhile, Bill Busch’s interim defense shut out a Big Ten opponent over one half for the fifth time, including first halves against West tormentors Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
Trey Palmer broke the Hawkeye’s pass defense – 165 receiving yards on his own while Iowa only allowed 164.4 total pass yards coming in – and the Huskers’ single-season record in the process.
Iowa’s famously excellent special teams contributed the game’s costliest blunder in muffing a punt inside their own 20 while already losing 17-0.
Oh, and Iowa had won 14 consecutive November games while NU had lost eight straight in November. Start the clock on the new streaks.
Like I said, unexpected and yet predictable.
For Mickey Joseph, it finally went exactly to plan.
As Nebraska’s interim head coach since September 11, Joseph has been responsible for leading the program, including making decisions like firing a coordinator and offering an in-state kicker a full scholarship.
But even as he appeared to transform the team’s mentality through emphasizing more accountability and additional physicality in practices, the come-from-ahead losses kept coming. Three in their last four games before Friday.
That all melts away once you get one. Just one.
Oh, those postgame scenes in Iowa City were worth all the angst and dread, weren’t they? Garrett Nelson parading the Heroes Trophy around Kinnick Stadium, proudly placing his helmet on the top. Casey Thompson – who did NOT need to come back to prove his value to this team – posing with the trophy and a crowd of Husker fans.
And Mickey. He will likely not be retained as the head coach going forward, per multiple local and national reports. But this is still about him, for another few hours anyway. He was handed an impossible situation, and still found a way to improve the defense, feature his offense’s best players, and pick up three conference wins with little runway.
Friday was all about Nelson, Vokolek, Newsome, and Henrich, the captains of this team. This is a results-based business, and it’s not easy to be a leader of a team that loses more often than it wins. Knowing what Iowa had to play for on Friday, you can’t help but be impressed with the grit and the fight Nebraska showed with nothing more than pride left on the field.
The 2022 season will be remembered for Scott Frost’s firing, for the Mickey Joseph era, and for the months-long coaching search that may mercifully end this weekend. But then your memories from Friday will flood back: “Oh yeah, and they beat Iowa that year, too! First time in eight years. Yeah they finished 4-8, but man it was sweet how they denied the Hawkeyes a division title!”
It’s those memories that this team fought for. Iowa didn’t want it as badly as Nebraska, and it showed in the first half. These captains and this coach brought the energy and the effort, and they emerged with a rare win.
Go ahead and let yourself enjoy it. Nobody’s coming from behind to take that away.