If you're asking yourself "Now what?" following NU's fourth straight loss, it might give you a shot of energy to know that interim athletic director Tom Osborne had nothing but kind words for the Huskers (and a handsh
Posted: Friday, October 26, 2007 7:00 pm
AUSTIN, Texas — So, what story plot can we think of to keep this thing interesting over the course of the next four weeks?
A coaching staff doing everything it can to save their jobs? That’s become a bit stale, don’t you think?
Well, what would you say to a quarterback situation that today may be a lot less up in the air than the surprising performance Nebraska gave before it gave way to Jamaal Charles’ fourth-quarter bursts that left the Huskers with a gut-wrenching 28-25 loss to the nation’s 17th-ranked team at Texas Memorial Stadium on Saturday.
If you’re asking yourself “Now what?” following NU’s fourth straight loss, it might give you a shot of energy to know that interim athletic director Tom Osborne had nothing but kind words for the Huskers (and a handshake for offensive coordinator Shawn Watson) as they came off the field.
Maybe you’d already given up on the game after Charles sprinted 40 yards for his third touchdown in the final eight minutes to give Texas a 28-17 lead. And so maybe you didn’t see what happened after Sam Keller suffered an injury to his left shoulder on his 35th pass attempt of the game.
Joe Ganz, who not attempted a throw since the opener, followed an incompletion by calmly delivering a fourth-and-10 strike to Maurice Purify that kept alive a late drive he would cap with another connection to Purify to force the home team to recover an on-side kick.
As empty as Ganz and his teammates had to have felt for coming up just short, there also existed a sense of renewed confidence.
And with it a vow to make these next three games just as exciting as Saturday’s — one of the strangest contests you’ll ever see.
Longhorns’ fans were actually booing their heroes early in the second half, but, of course, belted out the Eyes of Texas with them after the finish.
“It reminds me a lot of last year’s Texas game,” said the junior Ganz, referring to a 22-20 loss to the Longhorns that was a Terrence Nunn fumble away from being a 20-19 upset. “It’s not ‘What do we have to do?’ It’s just we’re so close and it’s just so upsetting to lose such a close game again.
“It’s tough, and I feel bad for (my teammates) because they played their tails off.”
But if Keller’s season is through — and judging from the tears that started to rain down his face as he greeted his parents outside the Nebraska locker room, it very well could be — the Huskers appear to have a backup with whom they can rally around.
“He’s one of those guys that for the last three years has been that guy that can run the offense just as good as the starter,” wide receiver Nate Swift said of Ganz. “We had Zac (Taylor), and (Joe) can come run it as good, and I think it’s the same thing here with Sam.
“As you saw, he’s got confidence and he’s calm under pressure.“
Obviously, success in one pinch-hit series does not provide us with all the answers about Ganz. But if he’s going to have to step in for Keller, Saturday’s showing by those who will surround him ought to leave him thinking the month of November can be one to remember for more than what might occur away from the field.
“It’s week to week, obviously, cuz anybody can beat anybody,” Ganz said after Nebraska showed its first real zip since winning at Wake Forest in the second game. “But I hope this gives us a lot of confidence going into this week and hopefully we get the thing right again against Kansas and play just as hard and play with as much emotion as we played today.
“That’s all you can really ask. You can’t ask people to do superhuman things. You’ve just got to ask them to give everything they have.”
The Huskers’ “everything” still wasn’t good enough. Texas eventually figured out that they couldn’t defend the zone-read run very well and produced 216 of its 545 yards in the fourth quarter. But unlike a couple weeks ago against Oklahoma State, there was no sense that Nebraska had given in, that it saw no hope of making things right.
Ganz said he never really wondered “Now why?” after NU’s previous three losses. It was just a matter of them selling out emotionally.
The way Nebraska went after Texas quarterback Colt McCoy, with blitz after blitz, you couldn’t question whether defensive coordinator Kevin Cosgrove had sold everything he had into trying to beat the Longhorns.
“It gave them a chance to win,” Mack Brown acknowledged of the Huskers after he’d notched his 100th win for the “Hook ’ems.”
I bet he never figured he’d be walking away from it breathing a major sigh of relief, though.
While Brown was left feeling fortunate, NU safety Ben Eisenhart was admitting how a Husker win would have given them some vindication for all the negativity they’ve endured the last month.
Still, the senior from Culbertson walked away with a different feeling. He wasn’t questioning if Nebraska will start getting the kind of difference-making plays late in games that will help it win one like Saturday’s — but when.
“We are down. I mean, four losses in a row, it sucks,” Eisenhart said. “But we like football. … I mean, I know we say the same thing every week, but we’ve just got to keep fighting, and one of these days we’re going to catch a break.”
To Texas defensive tackle Derek Lokey, the Huskers are well on their way.
“They were playing like they had nothing to lose,” Lokey said.
Anything less than three more of those performances would be disappointing.
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.