The Nebraska football defense posted a shutout, and the offense scored 49 points against 3-1 Baylor on a 75-degree afternoon in mid-October 1996, before a Homecoming crowd of 75,478 at Memorial Stadium.
“We played against the best team in America,” said Baylor Coach Chuck Reedy.
The Huskers were 3-1 and fifth-ranked, of course, having lost at Arizona State. Still …
“Defensively, they are probably as good as anybody that we have been on the field against,” Reedy said. “They don’t give you a chance to get a whole lot going.”
Nebraska limited the Bears to 117 yards of offense, including a net of 32 rushing on 34 carries, a total that reflected the Huskers’ seven sacks for 43 yards in losses. Eight Huskers were involved in the sacks, with 14 tackles for loss overall. The defense also had a dozen quarterback hurries.
Linebackers Jamel Williams and Terrell Farley led the way with eight and seven tackles, respectively.
“Probably the strongest part of their football team was their offense,” said Tom Osborne. “And holding them to just over a hundred yards is pretty significant, also considering the fact that we played a lot of second- and third-(team) during most of the second half.
“That’s pretty gratifying. We’ve got some depth there.”
Offensively, “our fear was that they would line up and just mash us with the running game, and that’s what they did,” Reedy said of Nebraska’s running game, which accounted for 491 of 669 total yards.
The rushing yards were a season-high. Damon Benning, who started at I-back in place of Ahman Green, led the way with 135 yards and three touchdowns on 22 carries. True freshman DeAngelo Evans followed up a big game against Kansas State with 195 yards and two touchdowns on 12 carries.
Green, sidelined by turf-toe, could’ve played “in a pinch,” Osborne said. But the numbers showed there was no pinch.
Seven other Huskers had carries, the longest by back-up quarterback Matt Turman, a 45-yard run for the last touchdown early in the fourth quarter. Scott Frost ran for the other touchdown. He finished with 90 yards on 12 carries and completed 8-of-15 passes for 178 yards, without an interception.
Split end Kenny Cheatham was the only Husker with more than one catch, and he had two.
Offensively, “we’re certainly better,” Osborne said. “We built some momentum. We’re in a little better rhythm now. That doesn’t mean that every game is going to be automatic 500 yards. But we’re certainly playing a lot better. I think what we really needed early on was just to play more football.”
As was typical of Osborne, not everything showed what it should. “If there were any flaws offensively, we had some dropped balls that we hoped we wouldn’t drop,” he said.
And then there was the issue of a blocked punt, Nebraska’s only punt attempt, on the next-to-last possession of the game. There were second- and third-team players in the game, but punter Jesse Kosch “just took a little bit longer to kick the ball,” said Osborne.
Baylor took over on the Husker 38-yard line, with a chance to score, except it was sack, sack and incomplete pass, leaving the Bears fourth-and-24. They punted.
The victory was Nebraska’s 33rd in a row at home, tying the school record.
“I thought we played well, obviously,” Osborne said. “I was a little bit surprised about how we stopped them on defense. I thought they had a good offensive team, not a great offensive team but a good offensive team.”
Defensively, the Bears showed “they’d crowd the line of scrimmage” more than they had the previous week in a 45-24 loss at Texas Tech, he said.
Next up for Nebraska was a trip to Lubbock to play the 4-2 Red Raiders.
