LINCOLN — Nyziah Hunter had just delivered what his teammates called the knockout blow when, standing in the end zone, he looked down.
“Wait, why is my shoe off?” he said after Nebraska’s 38-27 win over Michigan State.
It was that kind of afternoon, that kind of game, that kind of Big Ten, where the league’s preseason league favorite Penn State on Saturday lost to a winless UCLA, Washington overcame a giant fourth quarter deficit at Maryland and Nebraska’s star quarterback, after playing two of his worst quarters, strode up to his coach and bared his proverbial teeth a little.
“I’ve got blood in my eyes,” Dylan Raiola told Matt Rhule during the Huskers 38-27 win over Michigan State, which had more twist and turns than an amusement park ride.
Raiola, who had all of 24 passing yards at halftime, said it before he helped the Huskers (4-1, 1-1) overcome a 21-14 deficit with a third down, step-up-in-the-pocket, 45-yard pass to Jacory Barney that eventually led to the game-tying touchdown.
Which led to Michigan State (3-2, 0-2) muffing the ensuing kickoff, which Nebraska recovered and turned into a field goal. NU never relinquished the lead, but did deliver 86,496 piping fans at Memorial Stadium a thrill when Hunter, a transfer receiver from California, caught a short tunnel screen and turned it into a 59-yard catch-and-run score.
And, yes, he lost his shoe in the process. So he galloped in with one Adidas cleat and one red sock. Rhule, celebrating the score with six minutes, 45 seconds left in the fourth quarter, picked up the cleat and held it like a torch.
“That’s who Nyziah is, man,” Rhule said. “In the 90s, he’d have been an I-formation tailback. That’s who he is. He was hot today.”
Everybody was. The game revved its engine so much it overheated several times. Sacks. Fourth down conversions. Failed fake punts. Blocked punts. Touchdowns called back. Funny interceptions thrown by MSU quarterback Aidan Chiles, with the southern gusts, directly to Husker safety DeShon Singleton. The teams combined for just 501 yards — and scored 65 combined points.
But for long stretches of the scorching afternoon — on-field temps went north of 100 degrees — the wind blew, and Nebraska stood still. To Rhule, it felt reminiscent of NU’s loss last year to UCLA — or even, perhaps the Bruins’ stunning upset of Penn State on Saturday. Last year, Nebraska lost a close one to eventual national champion Ohio State and moped its way through a defeat to UCLA.
This year, Nebraska grabbed an early 14-0 lead on a Emmett Johnson rushing touchdown and Carter Nelson’s short return of a punt blocked so cleanly by Jamir Conn that he caught the ball on the foot of Michigan State punter Ryan Eckley.
NU appeared headed for cruise control.
Until a 17-play, 75-yard, 9:45 drive from the Spartans that spanned the first and second quarters, featured multiple Husker penalties and ended in a touchdown pass from the backup quarterback as Chiles recovered from a big hit.
When Nebraska returned to offense, it had been more than 30 minutes in real time that it had taken a snap. And it showed. Over the next six drives — three straight of which started in Michigan State territory — the Huskers had three punts, two turnovers on downs and a Raiola interception.
Rhule said the offense got “off kilter.” Raiola got sacked five times in that stretch. The crowd booed. Raiola, Rhule said, didn’t like the booing.
This is part of it, Rhule said. The team needs to play better.
“I love what he did after that,” Rhule said. “I felt like there was a little time in the middle where it was like ‘oh, what’s happening, what’s happening.’ At some point, I want Dylan angry. In the moment, locked in, but I want a fired up blood-in-his-eyes Dylan. Because that’s the Dylan there is. And the guys will fight for him.”
Starting with Raiola’s throw to Barney, they did.
Rhule felt he had to get the team engaged, awake, confident. He saw coaches giving halftime pep talks to defensive players who largely dominated MSU’s offense in the first half and wondered why it was needed.
Alarm bells rang — brrring! — throughout the first two seasons under Rhule. NU didn’t always answer, including last year.
Saturday, after simmering over a 30-27 loss to Michigan for two weeks, Nebraska didn’t hit the snooze button. NU slogged through two rough quarters and lost a shoe — but woke up just before it was too late.
“I’m super proud of the way we stuck together,” Raiola said. “We knew we were going to keep punching, they were going to punch, and eventually somebody was going to have to be knocked out. My man (Isaiah) didn’t have his shoe on and threw a knockout blow.”
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Sam McKewon
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