10 things we learned from Nebraska's loss to Iowa

Nebraska's season likely came to an end on Black Friday, and the Huskers fell to Iowa to finish the year 5-7.

Here are 10 of the most interesting things we learned from the loss...

When Collin Miller knocked the football away from Iowa running back Mekhi Sargent and Cam Taylor-Britt fell on it at the Nebraska 30-yard line with 2:32 remaining, it looked as if the Huskers’ luck had finally turned.

Instead, with a chance to snap a four-game losing streak to the Hawkeyes and clinch a bowl berth for the first time in three years, NU found one way after another to give the win away.

Tied at 24-24, quarterback Adrian Martinez had picked up a first down just shy of midfield to inch Nebraska closer to game-winning field goal range. But Wyatt Mazour was stuffed on a first-down run, and then, freshman quarterback Luke McCaffrey came in for the next play.

McCaffrey scrambled to get the ball to the NU 49, but a personal foul on receiver Mike Williams turned what would have been a third-and-five into a second-and-20. Martinez came back in and then ran out of bounds to stop the clock after a one-yard gain.

That gave Iowa 32 seconds to try and win the game starting at its own 26. Even after a deep pass from Nate Stanley to Nico Ragaini was ruled incomplete after review, Stanley followed up with back-to-back 22-yard completions to give the Hawkeyes a chance to win it with a 48-yard field goal.

Lou Groza Award finalist Keith Duncan drilled the kick through, sealing a fairly epic collapse for head coach Scott Frost’s team.

“I think this team’s confidence can sometimes be fragile, and that’s the team that we inherited, and that’s one of the things we’re focused on the most,” Frost said. “Winning’s a habit, losing’s a habit, and our team, this whole thing, needs some good things to happen so our guys can start building on it. Momentum’s a powerful thing.”

Martinez’s regression this season has been as much of a storyline as anything when it comes to explaining Nebraska’s disappointing 2019 campaign.

After a stellar freshman season, Martinez never looked right as a sophomore, even before the knee injury that forced him to miss two games. He was hesitant, slow, and missed throws that he made so often just a year ago.

The good news for the Huskers was that the drop-off from Martinez to the rest of the quarterbacks on the depth chart wasn’t nearly as drastic as some may have thought. In fact, both sophomore Noah Vedral and McCaffrey showed impressive flashes in their limited opportunities this season.

McCaffrey especially shined with his dynamic playmaking ability, and he did so again in his chances on Friday. He completed his only pass for a touchdown, and the cheers of “Luuuke!” rang louder than ever throughout Memorial Stadium.

It even got to the point where there were some audible boos from the crowd when Martinez checked back into the game and McCaffrey came out.

Frost has stuck by Martinez through thick and thin this year, and he knows firsthand what it’s like to be the quarterback every Nebraska fan wants to be benched. But at some point, the results are going to speak for themselves, and the Huskers could have a real QB battle to deal with starting this spring.

“We’re going to have time to evaluate a lot of things,” Frost said. “You know, Adrian’s been hurt this year, been nicked up. That certainly affected it. We need to find more people that can be open for him more consistently so he can trust that, we got to protect him better.

"I’m not defending anybody on the team, we all need to get better, but there’s a lot of things that need to happen a lot better around whoever’s playing quarterback.”

There’s a line from former NFL quarterback Dan Fouts, who plays the TV color analyst in the Adam Sandler football comedy, ‘The Waterboy,’ where he says: “Last game of the year, can’t hold anything back.”

That was clearly Frost’s mentality this week in creating the game plan for the regular-season finale vs. Iowa.

The Huskers brought out about every trick play in Frost’s playbook on Friday, running reverse passes to the quarterback, double-pass plays to a running back, five receivers line up on one side of the field, just to name a few.

The problem was hardly any of those fancy wrinkles produced much of anything. A reverse pass from Spielman to Martinez fell incomplete, and a lateral swing pass to Wyatt Mazour was stuffed for a loss.

Frost said he wanted to throw as much at Iowa’s defense as he could early on in the game not only with the hope of capitalizing on some trick plays, but also to keep the Hawkeyes guessing for the rest of the day.

“We weren’t going to leave anything out,” Frost said. “We had a short week where we weren’t going to leave anything in the tank. We had some good stuff for them. They did a good job staying disciplined on a couple things…

“The one thing that did is it kept them back, and I think that helped open up the run game a little bit. We felt like we needed to shoot those shots early when we were down 14 because we needed something good to happen to get back in it. Our guys did a good job in the third quarter of being physical and marching the ball.”

Nebraska’s special teams have been a real problem all year, and it goes beyond the season-long search for stability at kicker.

Friday was another example of how the third element has held the Huskers back, as some of the game’s most critical plays came on kicks, punts, and returns.

The biggest came in the second quarter after the Huskers had just scored on a pick-six by Taylor-Britt to cut the deficit to 17-10. Nebraska had been putting the ball short on pooch kickoffs all game, but suddenly Pickering booted the ball to the five-yard line.

Imhir Smith-Marsette, one of Iowa’s most explosive playmakers, fielded the ball and burst down the field for a 95-yard return for a touchdown to completely erase NU’s momentum.

The Hawkeyes averaged 31.8 yards on kickoff returns while the Huskers only had 6.0. Nebraska fielded just one punt, and that was when Spielman inexplicably grabbed the ball off a bounce and took a knee at his own two-yard line.

Isaac Armstrong punted 10 times in the loss and only averaged 38.8 yards per attempt.

For Nebraska to finally win some of these close games, it has to execute in all three phases and not have special teams be such a liability. Frost even said as much after the loss.

“Our (special teams) have to get better,” Frost said. “We have to getter in all three phases, and we will. Special teams definitely need to get better. You see teams with good special teams; it can change games. In these close games, turnovers and special teams make the difference.”

Nebraska’s defense was more than good enough to beat Iowa, with the exception of four very bad plays.

The first came on Smith’s 45-yard touchdown on a reverse on Iowa’s second drive, which caught the Huskers completely out of position and was just a good play call by the Hawkeyes.

The second was when freshman running back Tyler Goodson broke loose for a 55-yard touchdown at the end of the first quarter.

The Blackshirts tightened from there, though, holding Iowa’s offense scoreless and to just 17 total yards over the second and third quarters.

But with the game on the line in the final seconds, Nebraska gave up two straight 22-yard completions that moved the Hawkeyes into field goal range (and that didn’t include the pass to Ragaini that was overturned by replay).

Friday’s loss was a perfect example of just how little room for error the Huskers had this season.

“I thought our defense held their own in the run game,” Frost said. “They did a really good job against the pass. The kid (Stanley) is probably an NFL quarterback with an NFL arm. We didn’t give up much there. Those two big plays and the kickoff return really cost us.”

One of the best bright spots for Nebraska over the past few weeks was the emergence of Dedrick Mills as a bona fide workhorse running back.

The junior again played with as much fire and physicality as any Husker on offense, and he finished with 94 yards on 24 carries - including 19 carries for 74 yards in the second half - and a team-high four catches for 34 yards for his efforts.

Going back to his breakout performance in the loss to Wisconsin, Mills has averaged 116.3 rushing yards over the past three games.

He ended the season as Nebraska's leading rusher with 745 yards and was the team's leading scorer with 10 touchdowns (60 points).

Starting drives fast is so important for Nebraska to play with the type of offensive tempo it wants. So when the Huskers struggle on first down the way they did on Friday, it throws everything off.

On a total of 29 first-down plays vs. Iowa, NU gained a total of 56 yards - 1.9 yards per play.

Of those 29 first downs, 13 went for zero gain or losses, and only 11 picked up more than three yards.

There was a stretch from the end of the first quarter on into the start of the second where Nebraska had a string of consecutive first-down plays that went for losses of six, three, three, and four yards.

As a result, the Huskers found themselves in a whopping 21 third-down situations and only converted eight of those.

Early down struggles like will keep this offense from ever getting off the ground.

“That falls on my shoulders,” Martinez said. “Part of it is getting good plays on first down. I think it put Coach Frost in a tough spot, and it puts our offense in general in a tough spot when you don’t get positive plays to start a drive against a really solid defensive team.”

Nebraska went out of its way to keep Wan’Dale Robinson’s injury status a secret through the week, but the do-it-all true freshman was able to return to action on Iowa for the first time in nearly a month.

Robinson, who injured his hamstring at the end of NU’s loss at Purdue on Nov. 2, didn’t start against the Hawkeyes but checked in on the third play of the game.

He was only able to carry the ball three times for 14 yards before his day came to an abrupt end, and it was announced at halftime that Robinson would not be able to finish the game due to his injury.

“Wan’Dale tried, and one of the reasons I love that kid is he’s a competitor, and he’s going to be out there if he can,” Frost said. “He tried to go, but I think the hammy just kind of clenched up on him again. Even in warmups, he was telling me he could go, but I didn’t really see him cutting it loose.

"That was one more weapon we didn’t have after about a quarter, quarter-and-a-half, and we have to get more guys out there that are big players for us.”

After giving a heartfelt thank you to his seniors during his postgame speech, Frost then told his returning players to look back on how close this season was to being a completely different story.

The overtime loss at Colorado. The last-minute loss to Indiana. Falling at Purdue in the final seconds. And then, of course, Friday’s game-winning field goal by Iowa.

Had even one more play gone in NU’s favor in any of those games, the Huskers are probably going to a bowl game. Instead, they’ll be spending Christmas at home for a third straight year.

As frustrating as this entire season has been, Frost will try his best to use it as motivation for his team to show that, as bad as things feel right now, they aren’t nearly as far away as some may think.

“I think we were in about six close games this year, and we went 2-4,” Frost said. “Sometimes a little bit of confidence, a little bit of momentum, one more guy, one more play. There’s about four games you can point to one play and say if that play is different, that game’s different.

"We still have a long way to go, and at the same time, when you come up one play short in several games, you’re not that far away either. It’s coming, and I think people recognize that, and we’ll make sure the recruits recognize that too.”

The tears of emotion on Lamar Jackson’s face as he hugged Frost during the pregame Senior Day introductions said everything.

Nebraska’s senior class took the Memorial Stadium field for the final time on Friday, capping careers that had seen about as much adversity as any Huskers class in recent memory.

The Huskers’ 22 seniors, which includes seven players who have made 15 or more career starts, were recruited by Bo Pelini’s staff, played three years for Mike Riley’s staff and finished their time with Frost and Co.

Some, like the defensive linemen and defensive backs, played for a different position nearly every year they were in Lincoln. Others spent four or five years in the program without playing hardly a meaningful snap.

But the 22 seniors who played on Friday were the ones who stuck it out through all of that transition and turmoil, and for guys like Jackson, all of that emotion came pouring out against Iowa.

Yet in the end, that group ends its career going 0-4 against their Big Ten West Division rivals.

“At the end of the day, even though the outcome was what it was, (this season) was some of the most fun I’ve had my whole career,” Jackson said. “Playing for my brothers. I felt like everyone was out there giving it all they got, everybody left it all out there on the field, including myself.

“Of course it sucks, but I can’t change the outcome. I can only tell you how I feel and I’m extremely appreciative of everything, most of us got out healthy. There’s nothing I can really say except I wish we got the win, but I’m extremely grateful for everything and every situation.”