To say this season has been a nightmare for Penn State is both correct and unjust.
Hardly anyone, if anyone at all, could have predicted that Penn State – the once No. 2 team in the land, the team many had picked to win a national championship, the team what was supposed to get over hump it’s been stuck at for years – would go through October winless and find itself in the midst of a five-year worst losing streak.
But to say that it’s been a nightmare is unfair to reality.
This season – for as much as it’s been a hellish twist on what could have been – has also been reality smacking Penn State in the face – now four straight games in a row.
It’s that same reality that smacked Penn State as Iowa went down the field in two plays to score the winning points in a 25-24 defeat of the Nittany Lions.
It’s the same reality that Penn State must live with for the rest of the season.
To Terry Smith’s credit, the man who took over for James Franklin after the tied-for-second-winningest coach in program history after he was fired just last week, Penn State played with a level of effort that hadn’t been all season.
But the reality of the matter was that it wasn’t enough. Penn State couldn’t mask many of the same issues that plagued it earlier this season. Those were the same issues that, on the back of unavoidable expectations, got Franklin fired and Smith in that position this week.
Penn State gave up 245 yards to Iowa’s rushing attack. As it had been unable to do many times this season, when it mattered most, Penn State couldn’t get a stop.
After the Hawkeyes took the ball over with 4:56 on the clock, Penn State’s defense threatened to put an end to the present reality. One stop – with the way Penn State’s own offense had been rushing the ball – would all but ensure that things would snap back into place. One stop would both end the nightmare and complete the storybook moment for Smith.
Instead, Iowa quarterback Mark Gronowski found a massive hole, one that was left unfilled by a lack of depth at linebacker that’s failed Penn State for the last three weeks, and ran for 67 yards. Had it not been for a lack of stamina, Gronowski would have scored. Kaden Wetjen, on a 8-yard rush, took care of the rest as Iowa took the lead with 3:56 to play.
A defense heralded by the arrival of college football’s highest-paid defense coordinator in Jim Knowles could not, in this reality, save the day, continuing its frustrating run of letdowns yet again.
While Penn State’s offense found improvement on the back of a plan built around Kaytron Allen, the reality was that Penn State would need redshirt freshman and first-time starter Ethan Grunkemeyer to – through the air – lead the Nittany Lions down the field. Nearly four minutes wouldn’t have been enough time for Penn State to get down the field on the ground.
But the reality of Penn State’s inability to prepare backup quarterbacks in the Franklin era – even when his time at Penn State was over – was not over.
On a fourth down, a scrambled Grunkemeyer heaved the ball toward Trebor Peña but it was out of reach. Peña, who had dropped a touchdown in the end zone on the drive prior to Iowa taking the lead, fell to the ground and reality continued to crush Penn State.
Grunkemeyer finished with just 93 passing yards. Penn State’s longest completion went for 14 yards to a wide receiver who only caught one pass. The reality that this offense, created by Andy Kotelnicki, was never going to get better from last season seeped in on its final drive of the game.
It would have been a massive ask for Penn State to, with a first-time starting quarterback and a first-time college head coach, find a way out of the nightmare that is Kinnick at night. It was a reality created by a fired coach and a starting quarterback lost to a season-ending injury.
But the reality is that Penn State did not. The nightmare is reality.
And now facing a bye week before playing the No. 1 team in the country, Penn State must face a reality where it may not make a bowl this season. It must face a reality that much like the last four games this season is lost.
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