51����Ƶ

Minnesota’s charter plane took off from Minneapolis on Friday afternoon carrying a football team that was 33 players short due to a combination of COVID-19 cases and opt-outs.

It carried a defense that ranked dead last in the Big Ten in virtually every statistical category.

It landed in Lincoln with somewhere around 60 players who hadn’t taken the field in 22 days due to a COVID-19 outbreak that forced it to cancel games against Big Ten West division rivals on back-to-back weekends.

And when it lifted off for the Twin Cities on Saturday afternoon, it carried a team that beat Nebraska 24-17 with a combination of clock management, game control and execution, far outpacing the hosts in all three departments.

“I don't think we were flat, I thought the guys were ready to play. We just didn't execute very well,” Nebraska head coach Scott Frost said after his team fell to 2-5 on the season and lost as two-score home favorites for the second time this year. “I thought we played well enough defensively to win the game. We didn't execute very well on offense.”

For the Huskers, it was a second consecutive ugly home performance following a win. In November, Frost’s team followed a victory over Penn State with a dud against Illinois. This time, a road win against Purdue came with assurances that Nebraska had learned its lesson, intent to build on the win instead of faltering in the afterglow.

Instead, the Huskers’ first play from scrimmage resulted in a loss of 9 yards, and by the end of the first quarter they trailed the undermanned Gophers 10-0, mustering just 35 yards in the opening 15 minutes against a team that entered giving up 7.7 per play.

“You just can't start games that way,” Frost said. “We try to execute something simple that we think is going to get positive yards for us on first down — and you completed it 40 times in practice all week — and it's a little off. It's a horrible way to start the game.”

The offensive inconsistency, which persisted the entire day outside of a second-quarter spurt of two long scoring drives, cost more than the opportunities to score points. It also too often put the defense in bad situations.

Frost afterward said he thought the defense played well enough to position the Huskers for a win. It certainly wasn’t the Blackshirts’ most impressive effort of the year. NU gave up 212 rushing yards, failed to force a turnover and couldn’t get off the field on Minnesota’s final drive, which bled the final 4 minutes, 42 seconds off the clock.

But by that time much of the damage had already been inflicted.

Minnesota’s first touchdown drive covered just 35 yards after NU redshirt freshman quarterback Luke McCaffrey threw an interception during a brief stint in relief of junior Adrian Martinez, who was having his left hand looked at by trainers on the sideline.

Minnesota’s next scoring drive, a 36-yarder that ended in a field goal, followed an 8-yard punt from freshman walk-on Tyler Crawford that set the Gophers up at the NU 49.

Minnesota’s final scoring drive, a touchdown early in the fourth quarter, covered just 39 yards after Nebraska threw the ball three straight times in the waning moments of the third quarter and saw Martinez get hit and fumble on third down.

In fact, the Gophers’ lone long scoring march of the day came just before halftime and just after the Huskers had taken a 14-10 lead on the strength of consecutive scoring drives that covered 75 and 73 yards, respectively. Minnesota hadn’t had any success with a long field to that point in the game, and the Nebraska defense sensed an opportunity to get off the field quickly and potentially extend the lead before halftime.

Instead, Gopher redshirt freshman running back Cam Wiley ripped off 61 yards on drive’s first play.

“It was on us. We set the front the wrong way on the big run,” senior outside linebacker JoJo Domann said. “We were just trying to make a play, trying to get the ball back.”

For a moment, though, it appeared that Nebraska safety Marquel Dismuke had made the kind of effort play that doesn’t show up in the box score but can make the difference between a win and a loss — the kind of play a senior who’s gained so much in the way of trust and accountability over the past three seasons makes — on Senior Day.

Dismuke tracked down Wiley up the east sideline, saving a touchdown. Two plays later, senior safety Deontai WIlliams had an interception go through his hands. NU held strong on third down, though, as Cam Taylor-Britt put a big hit on quarterback Tanner Morgan, and the Gophers ran their field-goal unit onto the field. The replay booth buzzed down to the field and said it wanted to review for potential targeting on Taylor-Britt. He wasn’t penalized on the play, but the review resulted in a penalty, an ejection of the junior cornerback and a first-and-goal, which Minnesota promptly turned into a touchdown.

Instead of going into the half with either a 14-13 or 14-10 lead, Nebraska went in trailing 17-14 after that turn of events and a failed attempt at a two-minute drive that included Martinez overthrowing a wide open Oliver Martin up the right sideline on third down.

Frustrations only mounted in the second half. A 72-yard Husker march stalled in the red zone and, instead of tying the game at 17, senior kicker Connor Culp missed a field goal for the first time since Nov. 9. He had made nine straight.

Martinez, who completed 13-of-16 in the first half but missed chances at big plays by overthrowing Wan’Dale Robinson (for a touchdown) and Martin (for at least a big chunk), completed just 3-of-11 after halftime.

“I loved our game plan going in,” Frost said. “I thought we had some guys open. Wan’Dale was open on one and we missed him, and we had a corner route open and missed it. We had some other guys open on a couple others and got beat in protection. That's where it's just got to be consistency.

“You’ve got to hit the majority of them, you’ve got to protect the majority of the time. It's not meant to be an excuse, but we're still playing a lot of young guys and as they grow, they're going to win more often than they lose. You can't call however many pass plays we called and miss five and get sacked and get beaten in protection two or three times.

“Those mistakes get you beat in this league.”

NU’s three drives after the missed field goal featured two three-and-outs and the fumble. To make matters worse, the turnover came on the first drive in which Nebraska had anything resembling good field position, and instead of at least flipping the field, the Huskers handed Minnesota a short field, which promptly turned into a touchdown.

Minnesota’s 8-yard advantage in starting field position (own 33 to own 25) would have been even bigger if Crawford hadn’t unleashed a 61-yard punt that pinned the Gophers deep and helped set up, following a three-and-out, NU’s best field position of the day.

Trailing by 10, in the middle of the fourth quarter, Martinez had a touchdown run taken off the board by a holding penalty on redshirt freshman right guard Ethan Piper. NU eventually settled for three points and never got the ball back.

One final offensive frustration on a day chock full of them.

The miscues, the lack of execution, the missed throws, all of it would have been frustrating enough against another Big Ten opponent. Against this one, shorthanded as it was, it was all the more head-scratching.

“We’ve just got to find ways to win,” Domann said. “When your back’s against the wall and things don't go your way, you’ve got to find ways to win. That's part of creating a winning culture and just being accustomed to winning and finding ways to win.”