Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz looked as if he’d survived a Black Friday skirmish at Walmart after the Hawkeyes beat Nebraska on Friday, winning 31-28 on Miguel Recinos‘ 41-yard field goal as time expired.
Ferentz walked off the field with a bloodied mouth, courtesy of a headbutt from his quarterback, Nate Stanley.
No, Kirk Ferentz isn’t wearing lipstick.
He got headbutted in the postgame celebration, but the @HawkeyeFootball head coach didn’t let that ruin the interview: pic.twitter.com/vWIB0kU7CR
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) November 23, 2018
“I just headbutted Stanley. Not intentionally, he got me. I don’t think he saw me,” Ferentz told the Big Ten Network. “That one’s easy to live with.”
Nebraska had rallied in the fourth quarter, with quarterback Adrian Martinez passing for one touchdown and rushing for another to tie the score at 28 with a little more than three minutes remaining.
But Stanley engineered a game-winning drive on the Hawkeyes’ final possession, hitting T.J. Hockenson with a 10-yard pass on fourth-and-8 with 42 seconds remaining to sustain the drive. Recinos then hit the winning 41-yarder in a driving rain.
The win was Iowa’s eighth of the season, triggering a $500,000 bonus for Ferentz.