Friday, September 3rd, 2010
By Lance Braun
One of the great things about NU football tradition is there are many instances where our team didn’t give up. It didn’t matter the score, the venue or the time of year, you could always count on the Huskers to fight until the final whistle. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to see the Huskers take an opposing team behind the woodshed (yes, Arizona, I’m talking about you), but there’s something special about a come-from-behind win. It shows that a team is not going to fold up the tents when the chips are down. It shows that they have the character and the moxie to pull it all together when their backs are against the wall. It’s the mark of a winner.
With that being said, here are seven great comebacks in Cornhusker history:
7. 1966–Nebraska at Colorado
Comebacks against conference opponents can be especially sweet. Busting up their Homecoming? That much better. Such was the case when Nebraska traveled to Boulder in 1966. The Huskers were undefeated at 5-0 and sitting at #7 in the polls. The Huskers opened the scoring in the first quarter when Bob Churchich connected on a 14-yard TD pass to Ben Gregory to go up 7-0.
It looked like the Huskers were going to coast to another victory. But the Buffs came back strong, taking the lead on two short TD runs by Wilmer Cooks. When QB Dan Kelly hit Larry Plantz on a 29-yard TD pass late in the first half, the Buffs took a 19-7 lead and Husker hopes seemed to be fading. NU fought Colorado to a standstill in the third quarter, and appeared to be gaining momentum as they drove deep into Buffalo territory on a 72-yard drive. But on fourth down–the last play of the third quarter–Churchich was denied the end zone on a QB sneak.
Undaunted, Churchich rallied the troops in the fourth quarter. The defense shut down the Buffs on three consecutive drives, and Churchich guided the Huskers on two long scoring drives. The first ended with an 11-yard TD pass to Dennis Morrison. The second was aided by five straight Churchich pass completions, giving the Huskers first-and-goal at the Buff 9. Three plays later, Pete Tatman scored from two yards out with 53 seconds left in the game to give the Huskers the 21-19 win. Churchich ended the day by going 20 of 34 for 236 yards, all of which were Husker records at the time.
#3 Nebraska was riding high. They had just beaten #11 Oklahoma to win the Big 8 title and were looking ahead to #13 Louisiana State in the Orange Bowl. In between the Huskers were taking a little side trip to take on unranked Hawaii. Being as the game was not on TV and was coming on in the wee hours of the morning, many NU fans didn’t even stay up to listen to it on the radio.
I happened to be coming back from Cedar Falls, IA with family, so I was fortunate enough to get to listen to what turned into one of the wildest comebacks in Husker history. Nebraska had one of the most potent offenses in college football, but couldn’t get anything going against the Rainbow Warriors. In fact, Hawaii held a 10-0 halftime lead. The Huskers were piling up total offense, but just couldn’t manage to put it in the endzone. The tension grew and the fans got louder as the Huskers could only close the gap to 16-7 after three quarters.
Would this be one of the biggest upsets in recent college football history? QB Turner Gill, who hadn’t played the first half because of back spasms, drove NU to the Hawaii six, where they settled for a Kevin Seibel field goal, cutting the lead to 16-10. Less than a minute later, safety Allan Lyday recovered a fumble at the Rainbow 18. On the ensuing play, Gill raced for a touchdown. On the next drive, NU’s Bret Clark intercepted a Hawaii pass at midfield. Three plays later, Roger Craig scored from 6 yards away to increase the lead to 23-16. That broke the Rainbows’ backs. Doug Wilkening later scored on a 10-yard run, and Irving Fryar had a 70-yard punt return with a minute left to secure the win for the Huskers. Husker fans woke up to seeing a final score of 37-16, but many didn’t realize the high drama that had taken place the night before.
5. 1977 Liberty Bowl–Nebraska vs. North Carolina
1977 was a very up-and-down season for the Huskers. One week, lose to unranked Washington State. The next week, beat #4 Alabama. One week, lose to unranked Iowa State. The next week, blast #7 Colorado. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the #12 Huskers were having an up-and-down game against #14 North Carolina. Nebraska was leading in total offense, but found themselves down 14-7 late in the second quarter.
QB Tom Sorley marched the Huskers to the Tarheel six with nine seconds left in the half, but Sorley was hit in the act of throwing. Officials ruled it a fumble, and the half came to a close. The ‘Heels increased their lead to 17-7 in the third quarter, and the game looked like a UNC lock. North Carolina had the number one scoring defense in the country, and no team had scored more than 14 points on them all year. That changed in the fourth quarter though. On the opening play of the fourth quarter, with their backs against the wall, NU’s defense made a stand. Lee Kunz tipped a pass and tackle Barney Cotton (heard of him?) made an interception at the NU 26.
Backup QB Randy Garcia came on for the injured Sorley. Garcia engineered an 11-play, 74-yard drive, capped by a beautiful play-action pass to a diving Curtis Craig for a 10-yard touchdown. After a Tarheel turnover, the Huskers got the ball back on their own 47-yard line with six minutes left. The Huskers pounded at the Carolina defense, setting up another Garcia play-action pass. This time, Garcia found a wide open Tim Smith for a 34-yard TD with 3:16 left in the game. The 21-17 victory was huge for the Huskers because, at the time, there was some doubt as to whether or not Tom Osborne was the right man to guide the Huskers in the post-Devaney era.
4. 1995 Orange Bowl–NU vs. Miami
The questions on whether or not Osborne was the man would continue right up through the end of this game. Osborne was a decent coach. His teams were perfect for dismantling Big-8 foes like Kansas and Iowa State, but when put up against teams from warmer climates, they seemed a step too slow. The deck seemed especially stacked when undefeated Nebraska “played host” to the Miami Hurricanes in the 1995 Orange Bowl. The Hurricanes were super fast and were playing on their home field where they were virtually unbeatable. T.O. was faced with a dilemma: Whether to start option specialist Tommie Frazier who hadn’t played in three months because of blood clots or Brook Berringer the more traditional QB who the team had rallied around in Frazier’s absence.
Osborne decided on Frazier. During the course of the game, T.O. made two of the gutsiest calls in NU football history. The first was to bench Frazier, who looked rusty in the first quarter as NU fell behind 10-0. Berringer came off the bench and threw a 19-yard TD pass to Mark Gilman to cut the lead to 10-7 in the second quarter. But Miami’s massive defensive line pinned their ears back and came after the less-mobile Berringer. After a Dwayne Harris safety cut the Miami lead to 17-9, Osborne made his second gutsy call with 12 minutes left in the fourth quarter: He brought Frazier back into the game.
Next follows one of the greatest Husker urban legends of all-time. When Frazier came back into the game, as the story goes, Miami DT Warren Sapp mocked Frazier by saying, “Thomas! Thomas, where you been?” to which Frazier supposedly replied, “It’s not where I’ve been, Fat Boy…it’s where I’m going!” Frazier engineered drives of 40 and 58 yards, both capped by Cory Schlesinger touchdowns, as NU went on to win 24-17. Not only was it Osborne’s first of three national championships, but it was especially sweet because the two fourth quarter TDs were scored in the same endzone where Turner Gill’s comeback had fallen short in the 1984 Orange Bowl.
3. 1991–Nebraska vs. Oklahoma
Rivalry game…check. Chance to play in the Orange Bowl…check. But this epic comeback needs something else…how about some horrible weather? Throw in 32 degrees, sleet/snow/rain, and a howling north wind…NOW you’re talking! These were the conditions the Huskers were facing when they put their #11 ranking up against the #19 Sooners. The beginning was as bad for the Huskers as the weather was as NU turned the ball over three times in the first twelve minutes of the game.
The Sooners twice took advantage of the short field to open up a 14-0 lead. The Huskers did manage a field goal before halftime, trailing 14-3 at the break. Then, the football gods seemed to smile upon Nebraska. NU took the opening kickoff of the second half and drove 70 yards. QB Keithen McCant finished the drive with a beautiful 5-yard option run for a TD. Two possessions later, McCant went to take a snap, but lost the ball. Amazingly, the ball bounced right back up into McCant’s hands, and he hit TE Johnny Mitchell through double coverage for a 28-yard gain.
The Huskers settled for a Byron Bennett field goal on that drive, cutting the Sooner lead to 14-13. On their next drive, the Huskers put it on the back of a freshman. The Huskers marched 80 yards in 10 plays, with freshman RB Calvin Jones getting 78 yards, including a 15-yard TD with under 3 minutes left to give the Huskers their first lead of the game at 19-14. The Husker defense held on to seal the remarkable comeback.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJeo3_3KzCA[/youtube]
2. 2005 Alamo Bowl–Nebraska vs. Michigan
NU was coming off a huge upset win against Colorado, but their task in the Alamo Bowl seemed even more daunting. Michigan was 7-4, but the record was misleading. The four losses had been by a combined 17 points and they had two overtime wins, including one against previously unbeaten Penn State. Their lines were huge and imposing plus they had speed and talent all over their roster. To make it worse, the Michigan media was saying this was the game that would make up for the 1997 split national championship. Nebraska was a double-digit underdog, and with good reason. Unfortunately for the Michiganders, the Huskers showed they came to play.
In the first quarter, Zac Taylor hit Terrence Nunn on a nifty slant pattern. Nunn outraced the Michigan defense and scored from 52 yards away, and the Huskers led 7-0. Michigan came back to take the lead, but Taylor hit Nate Swift on a 14-yard TD strike to tie the game at intermission. NU actually took a 17-14 lead midway through the third quarter, but you could see the more physical Wolverines wearing the Huskers down. Taylor was taking a pounding from the Wolverine defense.
“Good game, Huskers, but…”
Michigan scored two more touchdowns to lead the Huskers 28-17 with 11:40 left in the game. But the Huskers got a much needed spark when Courtney Grixby returned a punt 25 yards to the Michigan 38. Then Cory Ross took over. “Pork Chop” followed up a 7-yard gain with a 31-yard sprint around left end for a TD. Taylor’s two-point conversion pass to Todd Peterson was good, and the Huskers trailed 28-25. The Huskers then forced a fumble on defense. The offense couldn’t capitalize, but the defense forced another fumble, which DT Ola Dagunduro returned to the Michigan 17-yard line.
Three plays later, Taylor hit Nunn with a 13-yard laser for the go-ahead TD with 4:29 left in the game. The Husker defense preserved the 32-28 win, with CB Zac Bowman playing the best football of his Husker career down the stretch. The improbable game ended the only way it could…with a “Stanford/Cal”-type play that almost rivaled the original for excitement. Oh yeah…and the Michigan media didn’t seem to want to talk about the “game to settle the 1997 national championship” when it was all over.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvTaN1uplS4[/youtube]
1. 1997–Nebraska at Missouri
“Miracle at Missouri”
“Carnage in Columbia”
“The Immaculate Reception”
Call it what you like. Everyone will always talk about “The Catch”. But we’ll get to that later. For me, it’s the 59:53 that got us to that last play in regulation where most of the drama lies. First off, ESPN had dubbed November 8, 1997 as “Judgment Day”. #4 Michigan was playing at #3 Penn State, #2 Florida State was playing at #5 North Carolina, and #1 Nebraska was playing a rivalry game at Missouri. The other teams were hoping Mizzou could keep it close, so that if they won their games they would at least be able to jump into the #1 argument. Then there was the game. That game still frustrates me to this day.
There were more twists and turns than an M. Night Shyamalan plotline. The Tiger receivers were running picks on the NU defenders all day and getting away with it. There were so many picks, I halfway expected ‘Shooter’ Flatch to holler, “We’re gonna run the picket fence!” and Jimmy Chitwood to pop out and shoot the game-winning three. But despite all the tricks that Mizzou Coach Larry Smith–looking vaguely like Emperor Palpatine–could dish out, the Huskers stayed in the game. Facing fourth down and trailing 38-31 with under four minutes left, Coach Osborne rolled the dice and took a huge gamble, punting to Missouri and hoping his defense could come up with a big stop. The Tigers gained a first down, but T.O. had saved all three of his timeouts. The defense held, and the Huskers got the ball back on their own 33, just 1:02 away from losing their undefeated season.
Quick…you have 67 yards to go in 62 seconds with no timeouts and you can pick any QB in NU history to guide you on that final drive. Who do you take? Tommie Frazier? Zac Taylor? Jerry Tagge? Turner Gill? Probably one of the last names you’d come up with would be Scott Frost. Now Frost was an excellent, hard-running quarterback, but few Nebraskans could’ve imagined what came next. Frost completed 4 of 7 passes on the drive–but two of them were clutch third-down completions–to take NU to the Tiger 12-yard line.
Frost threw two more incompletions on first and second down, setting up “The Davison Deflection” (I just made that one up) and the game-tying TD. I can’t tell you about NU’s possession in overtime, because ABC SCREWED UP THE COVERAGE, but I can tell you that Frost scored his fourth rushing TD of the day to give NU the lead for good. And really, when this game went into OT, was there any question that we were going to win? The Blackshirts owned Mizzou on the final Tiger drive, and the Huskers went on to win 45-38.
Okay….I finally made it through the article. Major heart stoppage a couple of times while I relived some of those games. I think I’m going to go pop in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl…a game with a little less drama.
The author can be reached at lbraun6970@hotmail.com
