Michigan’s latest heartbreaker came with a finish that looked impossible until it wasn’t.
Iowa left Ann Arbor with a 20-19 win on Saturday after Hank Brown drove the Hawkeyes 91 yards and finished the job with a 16-yard touchdown pass to Reese Vander Zee in the front corner of the end zone on the final play. The throw silenced the Big House and capped one of the wildest endings of the college football season so far.
The final snap was dramatic enough on its own. But Iowa only got that chance because just about everything broke its way in the closing seconds.
With 26 seconds left, Brown launched a deep ball to Tony Diaz on what looked like a desperate 4th-and-12 from Iowa’s own 30. The pass fell incomplete, but Michigan’s Zeke Berry was flagged for unnecessary roughness, handing the Hawkeyes 15 yards and a first down.
Then came the scramble.
With 11 seconds remaining, Iowa ran another frantic play that saw Brown’s pass tipped before landing in the hands of Addison Ostrenga. That sequence chewed the clock down to two seconds as the Hawkeyes rushed to the line and tried to get the winning play off in time.
There was also the possibility of another clock dispute, but Michigan defender John Henry Daley couldn’t get off the field after getting hurt. The officials stopped the clock, giving Iowa the breathing room it needed to reset and call the final play.
In the end, it was a chain of bad breaks for Michigan and a perfect storm for Iowa - one that turned a near-impossible situation into a game-winning touchdown at the final horn.
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