After so much walk-off woe against Iowa, Huskers seek brighter Black Friday

LAS VEGAS — Iowa had five first downs and a mere 164 yards in its final regular-season football game of 2024.

That’s not good. That’s really not good. Yet, it didn’t matter. The opponent was Nebraska, and the Hawkeyes swarmed off the Kinnick Stadium field with a 13-10 win. It was the first time an FBS team won a game with as few as five first downs since 2001.

The Hawkeyes were 117th in the nation in total offense with 328.8 yards per game. It was marked improvement from the previous two seasons, but not yet an average offensive performance from a major-college program.

Signs point to Iowa’s offense continuing to trend in the right direction this fall. New quarterback Mark Gronowski did all kinds of winning at South Dakota State. And if anything suggests the Hawkeyes will avoid 164-yard games this season, it’s having two of their offensive linemen among the 15 players named Tuesday to the Big Ten’s preseason honor list.

Senior center Logan Jones and senior tackle Gennings Dunker were the only O-linemen among the honorees. No player at any position from Michigan was honored. Or Wisconsin.

Or Nebraska, which was one of the six teams featured at Big Ten media days here Tuesday. Iowa isn’t under the neon lights until Thursday.

Is Nebraska finally ready to again be somebody in college football? Last year, the Huskers ended their bowl drought of seven years — what had been the longest active streak in FBS — by going 6-6 in the regular-season and then beating Boston College in the Pinstripe Bowl.

Baby steps. Matt Rhule is the coach Husker fans had been waiting for, it seems. He replaced Scott Frost, the coach Husker fans had been waiting for until he wasn’t.

Since these media days are being held at a property operated by MGM Resorts, let’s use BetMGM to let you know that entity has made Nebraska 9-1 to reach the Big Ten championship game, while Iowa is 16-1.

The why is for the bookmakers to explain. Rhule’s Huskers still have work to do be good enough on Black Friday to halt their six-game home losing streak against Iowa, let alone reach for the glory days of what now is long ago. A pair of 13-10 losses to the Hawkeyes the last two years weren’t what Rhule or Big Red red-hots had in mind.

“I’ve got great news,” Rhule said here. “Nothing that happened last year carries over this year.

“Like the Iowa loss at the end of the year was really, really painful, but sometimes it’s the pain you need. It’s the thing that spurs you forward in the offseason.

“There’s no complacency at the University of Nebraska. Our guys all understand that we’ve got good enough players. We have an excellent roster. We’re fast, we’re explosive, we’ve got veterans where we need to, we’re good on the line, we’ve got great coaches.”

Yet, Rhule acknowledged, “it’s all about performance.”

Four of Nebraska’s losses to Iowa since 2018 came on Hawkeye field goals with :00, :01, :00 and :00 remaining. Husker football won’t have a full exorcism until it has figured out how to stop letting the Hawkeyes slide off the hook.

Nebraska starting left guard Henry Lutovsky is from Crawfordsville, Iowa, just 32 miles south of Kinnick Stadium. You know he wants to do some Black Friday celebrating after the misery of the last two meetings with the Hawkeyes.

“No matter what, it's going to be a great fight,” Lutovsky said. “(Iowa) is a tough team. It's a very disciplined team, a great program. With that being said, it's going to be a dogfight, a gritty, tough game late November, like always. We’ve just got to be the team that comes out on top.”

With the Huskers driving in the last minute of a 10-10 game at Kinnick last year, Iowa defensive lineman Max Llewellyn strip-sacked Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola, and the Hawkeyes recovered at the NU 36. Two plays later, Drew Stevens kicked a 53-yard field goal for the walk-off win.

“We knew it would take a little bit of time to fix,” Rhule said Tuesday.

“We like our football team. We like our football team a lot. We believe we can play with anybody. We’re going to go make a run at this thing this year.”

Nov. 28. Friday morning, 11 a.m., in Lincoln. Until Nebraska gets past Iowa, a football season won’t be whole for Big Red.

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