Brandon Kinnie didn’t sleep well Saturday.

The junior wide receiver just keep replaying the same scene in his head, wishing his life was a videotape that he could rewind to the fourth quarter of Nebraska’s 20-13 loss to Texas.

By the time Kinnie’s chance came, it had already been a long day for the Cornhusker offense. Niles Paul and Rex Burkhead both dropped would-be touchdown passes, Taylor

Martinez was benched in favor of Zac Lee and the 48-point scoring attack that the Huskers unloaded against Kansas State was lost in a wheat field somewhere between Manhattan and Lincoln.

Saturday was supposed to be Nebraska’s day for revenge for last season’s Big 12 Championship game, its day to make impressions on the 11 NFL scouts in attendance and its day to stake a claim to the No. 1 ranking in the season’s first BCS rankings.

Instead it became a day of dropped balls, missed tackles and frequent encores of the Texas fight song. And for Kinnie, that nightmare day later became a sleepless night.

—-

It was a perfect throw. On a fourth and long from the Texas 38-yard line, Lee dropped back and unloaded a pristine pass to Kinnie.Chykie Brown, the Texas cornerback, was a step behind Kinnie when the ball hit the Husker’s glove at the 9-yard line.

It should have been a touchdown. A catch would have made it a one-possession game with seven minutes in the fourth quarter. But the pass hit Kinnie’s hands, then his knee, then the ground.

First down Longhorns.

Days later, the what-if factor still nags at Kinnie.

“Who knows how the game would have went after a touchdown like that,” he said. “There’s no telling what could have happened.”

He’s right. A touchdown could have sparked a comeback and made the Huskers forget about their 28 missed tackles and eight pass drops. A touchdown could have started the celebration that Nebraska fans had been waiting 10 months to uncork, from the angst of the last-second loss in the conference title game to the ill feelings bred in last summer’s conference shake-up.

But the ball hit the ground, and the Longhorns took over. A punt return for a touchdown later pulled the Huskers within seven, but Kinnie and the rest of the offense never again took the field before Texas ran out the clock.

That left Kinnie, a starting wide receiver in a run-first offense, replaying the same miserable play in his head and wondering how he is still without a touchdown in his Husker career.

Oh, the opportunities to score have been there.

There was Kinnie’s long catch against Washington that ended with him getting tripped up at the 1-yard line. A dive would have given him the score.

And then there’s last year’s Texas game. Kinnie went up for a ball in the end zone and came down with it. The only problem was that his feet were out of bounds. Had he managed to drag a toe inside the white line, it would likely have stamped Nebraska’s ticket to the Fiesta Bowl.

—-

And then came Saturday. After missing a catch that helped cost the Huskers a win against Texas last year, Kinnie had a chance to make amends. Failing to capitalize on that chance pains him.

“I’m just upset with myself because that’s not the type of player I am,” he said. “That play should have been made.”

And more than that, he just wants to taste the endzone for the first time in two years, back when he was playing at Fort Scott (Kan.) Community College.

“I keep saying these things about ‘I want to score’ or ‘I need one’ or stuff like that,” he said. “But I’m holding myself back from it, just like I did Saturday. I blame myself.”

But the time for wallowing is over, Kinnie said. Now he’s looking to use his drop for motivation for a rebound against No. 17 Oklahoma State. Offensive coordinator Shawn

Watson said that even-keel approach is helping Kinnie to move on.

“Brandon, he’s kind of the same every day,” Watson said. “He’s got great work ethic every day. He tries to improve on the things that he needed to improve on last week.”

Paul, who also dropped a potential touchdown catch, said the drops aren’t affecting the way the Huskers practice.

“I don’t see them as motivation,” he said. “We just know as a corps we’re better than that and we shouldn’t drop those balls. As (wide receivers coach Ted) Gilmore always says, ‘Do you want to be good receivers or great receivers?’ If we want to be great receivers, we need to catch those balls.”

But at least until he scores a touchdown, Saturday will sting for Brandon Kinnie. And all he wants to do is go back and fix it.

“It’s tough, it’s very tough,” he said. “I wish I can rewind it every second of the day.”