Iowa football rewind: Breaking down bizarre final 82 seconds of Iowa’s win over Nebraska

“It’s a total down fall” Iowa football coach s…

Tory Taylor’s excellent hold sets up Marshall Meeder’s game-winning field goal

IOWA CITY — The final 82 seconds of Iowa’s 13-10 win over Nebraska had no shortage of excitement.

“You can’t make this stuff up if you tried,” CBS color commentator Ross Tucker said.

The final 82 seconds of game time — a stretch that lasted more than 11 minutes in actual time — included two interceptions, one clock timing snafu and a game-winning moment for backup kicker Marshall Meeder.

Here are some observation from re-watching the bizarre ending along with the rest of Iowa’s 13-10 win over Nebraska:

Ethan Hurkett’s big interception
Cedar Rapids native and Iowa defensive end Ethan Hurkett experienced a bit of a throwback to his linebacker days when he caught a game-changing interception to give Iowa another shot at winning the game in regulation.

It was on a second-and-7 with 23 seconds remaining. Nebraska needed to go another 15-20 yards to reach field goal range.

Linebacker Nick Jackson made a pre-snap adjustment, Hurkett said. While linebacker Jay Higgins and the three other defensive linemen blitzed, Hurkett went back in a zone about four yards from the line of scrimmage.

That worked out perfectly for the Hawkeyes as Purdy, apparently not noticing Hurkett, tried rifling a throw to a tight end running right behind Hurkett.

“At first, I was like, ‘Is this really coming right to me?’” Hurkett said.

The Cedar Rapids Xavier graduate jumped to haul in the interception and returned it to the Nebraska 37-yard line.

“He looked pretty good running the football, too,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said of Hurkett’s return.

Why Deacon Hill went five yards back (and made Meeder’s attempt longer)
Iowa’s last offensive play was a delayed kneel by quarterback Deacon Hill for a loss of five yards. The play allowed Meeder to attempt the game-winning field goal, which also was his first in-game attempt in almost exactly a year, from the middle of the field.

It also pushed what would have been a 33-yard attempt back to a 38-yard attempt for Meeder, who was 4-of-10 on attempts from 30 yards or deeper in his final season with Central Michigan.

Hill said his instructions for the delayed kneel was “lose depth, get to the center.”

“Just didn’t want to be anywhere close to the line of scrimmage and risk not being able to get the timeout off,” Hill said.

It worked out in the end, as Meeder’s kick still had enough distance (with a few yards to spare) to win the game.

Clock issue gifts Iowa an extra 12 seconds
A snafu by the clock operator in Lincoln meant the Hawkeyes had a little extra time for their game-winning drive.

Nebraska had second-and-10 on its own 30-yard line with 1:22 to go in regulation.

The clock was stopped after an incomplete pass on the previous play. Then when Nebraska quarterback Chubba Purdy snapped the ball, the clock did not run.

The clock operator finally started the clock a few seconds after Purdy’s short completion on second down — about 12 seconds after the point when the clock was supposed to start.

At the time, it was not clear which team would benefit from the additional time. Those 12 seconds turned out to benefit the Hawkeyes greatly.

After Hurkett’s interception, Iowa had the ball on the Nebraska 37-yard line with two timeouts and 15 seconds remaining. That gave Iowa enough time for two more plays — Williams’ 22-yard run and Hill’s delayed kneel to move the ball to the center of the field.

Take away 12 of those 15 seconds, and Iowa’s options theoretically would have been to either try for a 60-yard field goal (while its top kicker was struggling) or go for a Hail Mary with a quarterback who had completed only 39 percent of his passes on the day.

Tory Taylor’s excellent hold
The spotlight has shined on Meeder after his 38-yard game-winning field goal, but his big moment likely would not have happened without the help of Tory Taylor.

The snap on Meeder’s game-winning field goal was off the mark, appearing to be low and a tad to the right.

Taylor caught the snap as it was hitting the ground, though, and quickly put the ball in the right spot for Meeder’s late heroics.

Taylor did this all while working with a different kicker than usual. Iowa benched its usual kicker Drew Stevens, a Lou Groza Award semifinalist, after he had two blocked field goals in the first half. (Stevens also had two kickoffs that landed out of bounds.)

A rare big play given up
Well before the dramatic final 82 seconds of the game, Iowa’s defense gave up an uncharacteristic big play in the second quarter. Nebraska quarterback Chubba Purdy connected with wide receiver Jaylen Lloyd for a 66-yard touchdown pass.

It was the first time since Iowa’s 15-6 win over Wisconsin last month where the defense gave up a completion of 40-plus yards.

A couple things went wrong for the Iowa defense on the Purdy touchdown pass.

Most notably, the play call was more aggressive than what Iowa needed to do in a favorable third-and-long scenario. Iowa had both safeties Quinn Schulte and Xavier Nwankpa fake the blitz.

The decision to send Schulte and Nwankpa on fake blitzes left the defense vulnerable in the deep-middle part of the field.

That meant Deshaun Lee, who has been thrust into a starting role because of Cooper DeJean’s season-ending injury, was the only one in a position to realistically cover Lloyd on his deep post route.

Lloyd sped past Lee with ease to get open, and Cash safety Sebastian Castro’s diving effort to stop Lloyd came up short.

The unnecessarily-aggressive call obviously did not burn the Hawkeyes too badly considering that they still won. The margin for error will be much slimmer, though, next weekend against Michigan.