On a beautiful fall Friday night in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Gophers dominated the #25 Nebraska Cornhuskers on both sides of the ball and cruised to a relatively easy 24-6 victory. Minnesota has now beaten the Huskers six straight in the series and five straight in Minneapolis. It was unquestionably the worst performance of the 2025 campaign for Nebraska as they could generate virtually no offense against a well-maligned Gopher secondary and allowed one of the poorest rushing offenses in the Big Ten (44 ypg) to pile up 186 yards on the ground. You have to go back to November 2022 (against Michigan) to find a game where the Nebraska offense failed to score a
touchdown.
The team that staged a gritty, tenacious comeback last week against Maryland was no where to be found as this group was sloppy, undisciplined, distracted, listless and lacking focus. Minnesota head coach PJ Fleck loves to beat Nebraska, and he is now 7-1 against his foe since he became the Gophers leader. Nebraska allegedly has more talent and a much larger NIL budget, but coaching, scheme and effort easily overcame any talent gap in this thrashing.
The red zone woes continued for Nebraska as they were inside the Minnesota 15-yard line twice in the first half and only came away with 6 points. Instead of a mid-game swoon in the 2 nd and 3 rd quarters, the Huskers swooned the entire game. The offensive line surrendered nine sacks (for -63 yards), sometimes with just a 3-man rush and has now given up 31 sacks against five Power Four opponents. That is unsustainable. Offensive guard Rocco Spindler was lost to injury early in the first quarter and left tackle Elijah Pritchett was ejected in the second quarter on a play that was called targeting but was more like excessive stupidity. The remaining linemen performed more like matadors than pass protectors as the offense compiled a measly 213 total yards.
Whatever superstitions surround the all-white uniforms were allowed to flourish with the game performance. I understand that the uniform choice should have nothing to do with the outcome of a contest, but for a team that is trying to recover from a very fragile psyche and were making steps in the right direction, this loss didn’t instill any great boost of confidence going forward. Why even make it an issue? Just burn the “surrender whites” and be done with the discussion.
Without looking for excuses, because Minnesota was far better prepared and thoroughly outplayed Nebraska, the distraction caused by Matt Rhule potentially being a candidate to succeed James Franklin at Penn State certainly didn’t help, especially with Rhule not categorically stating he was staying in Lincoln. With the play Friday night, Rhule may have successfully removed himself from consideration.
After leading 7-6 at half due to a 71-yard run to the 1-yard line, Minnesota essentially put the game away with a third quarter scoring drive of 98 yards on 14 plays that took 8:43 off the clock. Nebraska had a chance to get off the field when Minnesota faced a 4th and 3 from the NU 34-yard line when Donovan Jones broke up the pass, but Andrew Marshall was called for holding and the Gophers scored 2 plays later. Nebraska has now been outscored 52-7 in the third quarter this season. There was no heroic 4th quarter comeback as Minnesota went on to score 10 more points in the final stanza. Tackling was sloppy and run fits were misaligned and the Gopher freshman quarterback
was allowed to complete 80% of his throws. Husker defenders will likely be having nightmares as the shallow crossing pattern underneath repeatedly vexed the Blackshirts.
Dylan Raiola completed 17-of-24 passes for 177 yards and increased his career passing yardage total to 4,587, passing Eric Crouch (4,481 yards) for eighth place on Nebraska’s career passing list. No touchdown passes or interceptions, but he did display a shotput pass completion while falling down and a wobbly left-handed toss that was also completed. Dana Holgorson has got to figure out how to call plays that allow for a quicker release or Raiola may not live through the rest of the season. Raiola had 29 yards in positive rushing yardage to go with 63 yards in sack losses to net -34 yards
rushing.
Nobody wanted to beat Minnesota more than Minneapolis native Emmett Johnson who generated 100 yards from scrimmage in the game, including 14 rushes for 63 yards and five catches for 37 yards. This increases his career total to 75 receptions and he becomes just the third running back in school history with 75 career receptions and the seventh with 500 career receiving yards, joining Marlon Lucky (135) and Jeff Kinney (82).
You can tell that the Huskers are out of sync offensively when Jacory Barney finishes a game with one catch for one yard. The receivers struggled to gain separation all evening, and the passing game suffered accordingly. Tight end Luke Lindenmeyer did manage a career long 26-yard reception in the first quarter, and he finished the game with four receptions for 52 yards. Nyziah Hunter caught five passes for 40 yards to increase his career receiving total to 1,033 yards but dropped a long one that was placed right in the breadbasket. Redshirt freshman receiver Quinn Clark also had a career-long 43-yard reception in the second quarter, bettering a 37-yard touchdown reception against Akron. Dane Key, who scored the game winning TD last week was targeted twice but had no catches.
In a game that was replete with missed tackles, senior linebacker Javin Wright had a career-high-tying 12 stops, marking his fourth consecutive game with double-figure tackles. Wright is the first Husker to record double-figure tackles in four straight games since Barrett Ruud in 2004. Linebacker Marques Watson-Trent had a season-high 11 tackles, bettering his previous high of six against Maryland. He now has 17 career games with 10 or more tackles, including his five seasons at Georgia Southern. Now if we can just get a few tackles closer to the line of scrimmage…. Defensive lineman
Keona Davis shared a second-quarter sack with Watson-Trent, his first career sack. Davis finished the game with a career-high six tackles, bettering his previous career high of four tackles at Maryland last week. It is difficult to highlight a defensive performance that contained so many lowlights.
Special teams were probably the only unit that had an above average game as place-kicker Kyle Cunanan connected on 2-of-2 field goals in the game and improved to 11-of-12 on the season. Cunanan has made his last seven field goals. Punter Archie Wilson improved significantly on last week’s performance as he averaged 44.6 on five punts placing a beauty at the 2-yard line. Jacory Barney had a poor return of -8 yards and a nice return of 30 yards. Kenneth Williams couldn’t replicate last week’s long return as he netted just 12 yards on a solo kickoff return. The kickoff team contained the Gophers well on just two short returns.
This was a bad loss and Nebraska’s return to the rankings was short-lived. I trust that Rhule and company can use the longer week ahead to learn what needs to be done to flip the script against a Northwestern team that always plays well against Nebraska. It will be interesting to see if the Huskers can learn and put this loss behind them or if it will create doubt and a crisis in confidence going forward. If Rhule is the coach I hope he is, the Huskers can build on this and not repeat it. Were they overconfident being a one-score favorite on the road or just ill-prepared? It should be abundantly clear to everyone that there are no gimmes or easy games in this conference. Every game is likely to be a slugfest that can go either way and the year has already provided several significant upsets. Just ask former #2 Miami how they feel about now. Nebraska is very young and will not be a contender for any championships this year, but they still have an opportunity to improve on last year’s 7-6 record, and they can also play the spoiler role as well. Learn the necessary lessons and move on. Go Big Red!!!
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