How Illinois’ fourth-quarter touchdown pass to a 335-pound offensive lineman came to life

“We kind of wore them down,” Bielema said. “They have some good big players up front. We didn’t know if we could wear them down on the fourth, fifth, sixth play in the first half. But we thought in the second half, we gained an advantage.

“We did think if we could turn this into a four-quarter game that was to our advantage. I didn’t script it to go to overtime.”

The wearing down of Nebraska came into play in the overtime that opened with a 21-yard Kaden Feagin run around the end that set up the go-ahead touchdown on a 4-yard pass from Luke Altmyer to Pat Bryant.

“I was going and it just got wide open on the side,” Feagin said. “My eyes got wide open. It felt really good to make that play… We were starting to hit towards the end of the third quarter, so we knew we were going to bust a few.”

The Illini ended the game by overwhelming the Husker offensive line, sacking Dylan Raiola on three of Nebraska’s four final plays.

“I was thinking just go finish,” said Alec Bryant, who had the first of the three sacks. “We saw an opportunity to win the game on defense and we did it.”

Illinois scored the game-tying touchdown early in the fourth quarter on a pass from Altmyer to offensive lineman Brandon Henderson, a play Bielema said was a couple of weeks in the making.

“He and I had a conversation two weeks ago about what his number was going to be,” Bielema said. “I said, ‘You just look like a 94.’ And then we repped that pass this week. As a staff, we kind of took a vote on whether or not we thought it would get thrown and completed and we all voted yes. I didn’t know it was going to be the fourth down call to put us in position to win the game.”

For his part, Altmyer said he simply tried to get the 6-foot-5, 335-pounder a ball he could easily catch.

“We certainly didn’t go out there and that was the first time we did it,” Altmyer said. “It was an amazing call. It’s always cool to see a big-man TD. The first couple times (in practice) he had a couple bobbles. But in a big-time environment, big-time players make big-time plays. I asked him afterwards ‘Were you nervous?’ He said, ‘Not one bit.’ I told him I was.’”

The other key to Illinois win was, Bielema said, turning up the heat on Raiola in the second half.

“At halftime, we talked about let’s pressure this guy,” he said. “He was sitting back there all day. We wanted to heat him up a little bit in the second half, make him adjust. For us, defensively, we get better as the game goes along. I think our guys during the course of the game really began to understand what pressure would do to him.”