No amount of skill, passion, tactics, nor effort can overcome getting jobbed by the officials. We can only own our own mistakes, and our mistakes were not enough to lose the game. The INT thrown by Price in the red zone wasn't good, but no points came from that TO as our D stopped them. Obviously the fumbled kick off at our 1 yard line was killer, but also should not have been so bad had the bought and paid for refs not completely screwed us over.
NE did enough to win this game on their own merits, but the momentum was decisively turned by the refs. The way we were rolling in the first half, that muffed punt was very likely 7 points and 3 for sure with Folk, so a at minimum a 6 point sway and in all likeliness, a 10 point sway. We take a 24-14 lead into the half, and this would have been a much different game. Then the 4th down we didn't convert inside the 20 would have been a FG for 3 points at least, if the game score was where it should have been. The way I see it, the refs cost us no less than 13 points, and that isn't counting the "ifs" like maybe we hold NE to a FG after the other 20 yards of bad call on the other botched interference penalty and Holt's justified outburst. What was the margin of victory? 13 damn points.
What a travesty.
Revised non-screwed over scoring:
Half: 24-14 TD play off muffed punt
3rd Q: 24-21 TD off NE drive
24-28 off fumbled kick off
Nebraska up, but still very much a game. And then we were also forced to oneside kick twice in which NE had easy drives starting from mid field.