BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Question everything.

Everything that you know and think you know about Nebraska football after its shocking 56-7 loss Saturday at Indiana. Question it all.

Question the opponent. Was that really Indiana, the Hoosiers, or was that Ohio State?

No, actually, it didn’t look like Ohio State, the next foe for Nebraska. Saturday at Indiana’s Memorial Stadium looked like the kind of sheer domination you’d expect if Matt Rhule’s team played the Indianapolis Colts.

Absurd as that sounds, this was somehow more bizarre. Nebraska committed five turnovers, including three among its 0-for-5 showing on fourth down. The Huskers just handed the ball to No. 16 Indiana and its high-powered offense seven times.

Final: Indiana 56, Nebraska 7.

That’s a stain on the Nebraska season that will remain no matter what happens the rest of this season.

— Mitch Sherman (@mitchsherman) October 19, 2024

That is giving away the game. That is the opposite of complementary football. That is losing football. That is an embarrassment on a level for Nebraska reminiscent of 20 years ago this month, when Bill Callahan, in his first of four seasons with the Huskers, took a one-loss team to Texas Tech and lost 70-10.

If you remember that game, with a true freshman quarterback fed to the wolves in the second half, well, I’m sorry. It was hard to forget. For years, it remained a stain on Nebraska. Fans of lesser teams in the Big 12 regurgitated the score as a way to mock the Huskers, who had posterized programs for years with similarly lopsided outcomes.

The images from Saturday won’t fade soon — of Indiana running backs Justice Ellison and Ty Son Lawton bursting through the second level of the Nebraska defense; of Kurtis Rourke slinging passes in front of poorly positioned defensive backs; of freshman Dylan Raiola forcing throws into blanket coverage and frustratedly addressing quarterbacks coach Glenn Thomas on the sideline after an Indiana defensive back raced 78 yards with an interception to open the second half.

“We’ll take this one,” Rhule said. “We’ll let it hurt. We won’t say much, I hope. We’ll go back home. We’ll wake up tomorrow, and we’ll get to work on next week. Because no matter what the score was, we lost. Whether you lose in overtime or you lose by the score we lost by today, it’s just a loss. It’s a bad loss.”

Oh, but it’s not just a loss. Not 56-7 at Indiana, which last won a Big Ten game by such a margin in 1945 and hasn’t won more than eight games in a season in more than 50 years.

It’s more than a loss. It’s something that lingers and zaps momentum, which was slow to build for Nebraska this season after its brilliant first half in a 28-10 win against Colorado six weeks ago.

Something has felt off about the Huskers since Week 2 despite their 5-1 mark to enter Saturday. With the exception of a strong second half at lowly Purdue, they rarely appeared in sync.

Yet Rhule said after the debacle in Bloomington that he didn’t see the signs.

“I usually can see things coming,” he said. “I’ll tell you right now, I did not see this coming.”

So does Rhule have his finger on the pulse of this team?

Question everything.

“As I told the guys in there, this happened on my watch,” the coach said.

Rhule continued to take the blame for the defeat in his postgame interview. He apologized multiple times to fans who made the trip to Indiana and to those who’ve invested their time and money in Nebraska football.

Money matters more than ever, by the way, in this name, image and likeness world. Don’t think it was far from the minds of athletic director Troy Dannen and his lieutenant in charge of football, Haven Fields, as they watched the final seconds Saturday on a beautifully sunny afternoon from the far edge of the Nebraska sideline.

“It was bad football,” Rhule said. “I’m not embarrassed by our players, but I’m embarrassed by the job that I did to get our team ready. I have to do a better job next week and in the weeks after.”

Question it. Nebraska stands little chance at Ohio State, which took this weekend off to rest after its first loss of the season, by 1 point at Oregon. The Huskers are set to enter November at 5-3, just like last season, when they lost their final four and missed a bowl game for the seventh consecutive season.

This season, Nebraska trades out Maryland and Michigan State for UCLA and USC, keeping Wisconsin and Iowa to finish. The Bruins earned their second victory of the season Saturday — on the road against Rutgers — and will have a week off before heading to Nebraska.

There is no assured sixth victory out there.

Nineteen games in at Nebraska, Rhule seemed a bit shaken Saturday.

“We’ve been together now for about a year and a half,” he said, “and that was the first time it was like this.”

Defensively, Nebraska couldn’t get off the field, allowing 6.5 yards per Indiana rush and 9.3 per pass attempt. The Hoosiers beat Nebraska in every quarter and in every phase. They came in better prepared after both teams enjoyed a week off. IU scored on its first drive, then kicked off to the corner, perhaps trying to goad Nebraska’s error-prone special teams into a mistake.

Jacory Barney caught the ball at the 1-yard line and ran out of bounds.

Starting at the 1, Nebraska got 2 yards on a power run by Dante Dowdell, then it put the ball in the air on eight consecutive plays over two possessions.

“We wanted to get into big (offensive sets),” Rhule said. “We wanted to run the ball. We wanted to play action. We wanted to be violent.”

Go ahead, question that, considering the strategy of offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield at the start.

“I don’t know that we’re going to win,” Rhule said. “just dropping back and throwing it every play. We need a run game to go with it.”

Five running backs carried 20 times for 49 yards with a lost fumble by Dowdell after what would have been a successful fourth-down conversion in the red zone when the Hoosiers led 7-0.

“It stings,” Raiola said. “But we’ve just got to learn from it and move on.”

Said wide receiver Jaylen Lloyd: “It’s tough. There’s nothing we can do right now.”

None of the seniors on the roster was made available to the media after the defeat.

Junior defensive end Jimari Butler said the Huskers’ confidence suffered when Indiana made a big play.

“Sometimes,” Butler said, “plays don’t go our way and we kind of get down on ourselves.”

Why? The defense is full of seasoned vets. Few of them, of course, have much experience with winning at the collegiate level.

On that, listen to what Indiana coach Curt Cignetti told the Hoosiers before kickoff.

“They’re going to start getting rattled and start getting frustrated,” IU linebacker Jailin Walker said, repeating Cignetti’s message. “So we knew once we got them in that element, then it was time to put the football really on the gas.”

And that is exactly what the Hoosiers did. From late in the first quarter to early in the fourth, they scored touchdowns on six consecutive possessions — not including a 25-second drive at the end of the first half.

For Nebraska, it was a dark day. Where do the Huskers go from here, with a giant in college football, a team much more talented than Indiana, looming?

“I just think that our guys are going to bounce back,” Rhule said. “I’ve never doubted the character of those guys.”

The Huskers practiced well before the trip to Bloomington, he said, and they didn’t quit when events began to spiral Saturday.

“They’re resilient,” Rhule said. “And they want to battle.”

Until Nebraska proves it when backed into a corner in need of a big answer, question that, too.

Question it all.

(Photo of Dylan Raiola: Rich Janzaruk / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)