Tad Stryker: Lateef Rocks Steady

There was a lot riding on TJ Lateef in his first start Saturday night, but you couldn’t tell by looking at him. While the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was inducting its Class of 2025 just a few miles away, Lateef stepped up and delivered, making more than his share of beautiful music all night long.

He had a large contingent of family and friends in the stands, a resurgent offensive line in front of him and Emmett Johnson alongside to do the heavy lifting. The remarkable thing about the 6-foot-1, 200-pounder’s performance against UCLA is that it seemed to work out exactly like Dana Holgorsen drew it up. He played turnover-free, didn’t try to do too much, and yet when it really mattered, he and Johnson hit on a couple of killer riffs that badly damaged the Bruins. It was a workmanlike job by Lateef in his first start who showed a lot of promise and plenty to build on.

The Huskers’ offensive performance was almost professional in its efficiency, right down to doubling up UCLA with a touchdown at the end of the first half and another at the start of the second, sandwiched around a missed field goal by UCLA.

Jacory Barney caught a touchdown pass on the opening drive of the game and finished with 60 all-purpose yards. | Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

Nebraska had the ball for only seven drives, not including a kneeldown at the end of the first half, and five of them were effective, including four touchdowns. After UCLA came back to within seven points, NU put together a clock-killing nine-play march with three first downs that consumed the final 4:54 of the game. It seemed like a seamless transition from Dylan Raiola to Lateef, who, at least for this game, had the answers when Nebraska needed them to wrap up its second conference road win and move to 7-3 overall, giving Matt Rhule his second November win as Nebraska’s head coach and the Huskers their most reliable quarterback depth in recent memory.

On a night when Paul Rodgers and the 1970s British supergroup Bad Company received some long-overdue recognition from their peers, Lateef, who grew up in nearby Compton, was an effective marksman, a straight shooter who grabbed the Huskers’ first win in the Rose Bowl Stadium since Trev Alberts and Lawrence Phillips teamed up to get a 14-13 win in 1993. The Huskers got their second 28-21 victory in three weeks and now have a bye week to prepare for a trip to Happy Valley to face Penn State, which came within an eyelash of knocking off undefeated Indiana.

It was a game the Huskers truly needed to remain on track for a significant uptick in Rhule’s third season, and they got it, partly because the offensive line showed some significant improvement. Center Justin Evans and guards Henry Lutovsky and Rocco Spindler moved the line of scrimmage early and often, giving Johnson and Lateef plenty of room to operate. The o-line will need to keep trending upward, because the last two games on the schedule will be tougher tests for the Big Red.

UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava ran for more than 100 yards, although three sacks knocked down his net rushing total to 86. | Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

Johnson continues to get stronger as the year goes on. He ran the ball 28 times for 129 yards and a touchdown and caught three passes for 103 yards and two more scores. He shows no sign of wearing down, despite his heavy workload, which now has crept above 200 rushing attempts and has reached the 30-reception mark.

Lateef completed his first 11 passes and the offensive line kept him clean. UCLA (3-6, 3-3) never pressured the true freshman; the Bruins had no sacks and just two tackles for loss all night. Lateef averaged 13.7 yards per pass attempt, quite impressive for a first start. He played fluid and loose, never looked uncomfortable, didn’t make rookie mistakes and let the game come to him, finishing 13 of 15 for 205 yards and three touchdowns and rushing five times for 31 yards, posing enough of a running threat to create uncertainty in the Bruin defense.

Lateef’s best moment was early in the second quarter, when he collaborated with Johnson on a 56-yard screen pass that went all the way for a touchdown. Credit Evans and Spindler for getting downfield to clear the way for EJ to get underway, and then he was gone, gone, gone down the sideline for the score.

Emmett Johnson scores one of his three touchdowns against the UCLA Bruins at the Rose Bowl. | Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

While the Husker offense was in high gear, the defense had its share of anticipated problems with Bruin quarterback Nico Iamaleava, whose scrambling and athletic ability at times made him look a bit like Vince Young, who ran to glory on the same field about 20 years ago. Iamaleava, a transfer from Tennessee, ran 15 times and gained more than 100 yards, although the Huskers sacked him three times, which knocked his net rushing total down to 86. Possibly the best athlete on the field, Iamaleava also bedeviled the Nebraska secondary, completing 17 of 27 passes for 191 yards and two touchdowns.

There was sufficient slack in the Blackshirts to create at least enough concern to fill the next two weeks leading up to the long flight to Pennsylvania, and no doubt that will be the case. Nebraska’s rush defense is not stout, rated 93rd in the nation coming into the game. The Blackshirts are not getting takeaways; the Nittany Lions on Nov. 22 and Iowa on Black Friday will test them severely. It’s the single main reason the Huskers and the Bruins battled to a draw in the running game, with UCLA getting 157 net yards on 37 carries and Nebraska getting 156 on 39 rushes. The Blackshirts had no end of trouble with the athleticism Iamaleava brings to the game, but ultimately made enough stops to keep time of possession at a 30-30 tie and take care of business on the road in the Big Ten.

The Huskers cleaned up one other troubling area of their game — their tendency to crater in the third quarter. NU scored on its first drive of the second half and allowed just one UCLA touchdown to call the third quarter a draw, which enabled the Huskers to hang onto a three-score lead that shrank as the second half wore on.

Johnson, with 1,131 rushing yards and 300 receiving yards in 10 games, is clearly the Huskers’ most reliable asset and best shot at getting a first-team All-Big Ten selection. It feels like the Huskers will try to ride him to the end of the season, which may well be their best strategy, but Lateef adds enough intrigue with his legs and his arm to make this the most optimistic November around Memorial Stadium in more than a decade.

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