Nebraska Football: TBT- Husker Rally Has Michigan State Seeing Red
By Sean Martin
November 7, 2015 – Ninety-one yards and the Nebraska football team had all of 55 seconds in which to travel for a season-defining victory over an unbeaten Michigan State team on a rowdy Saturday night in Lincoln, Neb.
No problem for quarterback Tommy Armstrong, Jr. and the Husker offense.
Head coach Mike Riley’s first season guiding Big Red football was filled with gut-wrenching heartache with last second losses to BYU, Miami (FL) and Illinois along with a two-point loss at home to Northwestern and a disaster at Purdue.
The silver lining on the 6-7 season?
Nebraska 39, Michigan State 38.
The Huskers trailed the Spartans, the eventual Big Ten champion and college football playoff participant 38-26 with 8:50 to play in the fourth quarter.
Nebraska drew to within 38-33 when Armstrong capped a 10-play, 53-yard drive with a one-yard touchdown run leaving 1:47 left to play. Following an unsuccessful onside kick attempt, Michigan State went conservative in the closing seconds, running the ball three times for two yards as Nebraska exhausted its timeouts.
Following a punt to the Husker nine-yard line, Armstrong and the offense went to work.
A 28-yard completion to Jordan Westerkamp was followed by a 33-yard pass to No. 1 and suddenly, Big Red was knocking on the door at the Michigan State 30-yard line with 37 seconds left to play.
Following a Spartan timeout and an Armstrong incompletion –- a near end zone interception by Arjen Colquhoun –- Armstrong looked to the left sideline to Brandon Reilly on the next play.
How you feel about what happened next largely depends on if you were wearing Husker red or Spartan green that evening.
As Reilly battled for position with Michigan State corner Jermaine Edmondson, the junior wideout clearly stepped out of bounds before catching the ball over a fallen Edmondson and landed in the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown with 17 seconds left to play.
The official on the play — in a good position to make the call –- ruled (ahem…wink, wink) that Reilly had been forced out of bounds by Edmondson and could legally return to the field of play making him eligible to catch the pass.
Next: Helu’s Record-Setting Day vs. Missouri
This touched off a wild celebration in Memorial Stadium.
MSU drove into Husker territory on the ensuing drive but ran out of time and Nebraska had its signature win of the 2015 season.