When Bret Meyer woke up Sunday morning, he didn’t feel quite as well as he does after most games.

He was sore.

“A little more then usual,” Iowa State’s quarterback acknowledged Monday.

That’s because he spent much of Saturday afternoon flat on his back.

Iowa State’s offense allowed seven sacks against No. 7 Texas, keeping Meyer running for his life.

“Bret’s a great player and if you give him time, he’s going to make plays,” fullback Ryan Kock said.

“He can’t get hit any more like that this year.”

From the first play on, Texas was in Meyer’s face, adding 13 quarterback hurries to its seven sacks.

Conversely, the ISU defense had only one sack and wasn’t credited with a single hurry all game.

Through their first three games, the Cyclones had done a good job protecting their quarterback, allowing only four sacks in those games. Then things changed.

Four of Texas’ sacks were in the first half, with two coming on back-to-back plays with less than a minute until halftime.

All the sacks and pressure isn’t one person’s fault, Meyer said.

“It’s not on our linemen; it’s not on any one person; it’s on us as a unit,” Meyer said.

Things aren’t expected to get easier when Iowa State hosts Northern Iowa, last year’s Division I-AA runner-up.

“They blitzed us two years ago and I guarantee they’ll do it again,” said center Scott Stephenson.

Now the job for Iowa State is to become more consistent.

“A couple drives we’ve had in every game, we’ve looked as good as anyone in the country,” Kock said.

“Then something falters or doesn’t go right and we look as bad as anyone in the country.”

The first half against Texas is a perfect example.

Iowa State’s first two possessions were awful, netting 6 yards total in six plays. Meyer went 1-for-4 in those possessions and was hurried twice. The score was already 16-0 Texas when Iowa State got the ball for the third time.

Then something clicked for the Cyclones, and they pulled themselves back into the game.

Meyer capped a 76-yard drive with a spectacular touchdown toss to Walter Nickel and then hit Todd Blythe for a score just a few minutes later.

Suddenly it was a ball game again, 16-14.

“We know what we can do [offensively],” Kock said. “Now we just have to be able to do it.”

Four games into the season, the Cyclones are 2-2, with more brutal games ahead. Their next two Big 12 opponents – Nebraska and Oklahoma – are both ranked and Texas Tech finished just outside the top 25.

“We have to start over,” Meyer said. “We’re .500 and we have eight games left, so we can go one of two ways. In the past we’ve gotten to stretches like this and we’ve gone the right way and that’s what I think we’ll do.”