Penn State football report card: Grading the loss at Iowa

It's Sunday morning, Penn State fans, and we have encouraging news to share: The sun did rise today, even after the Nittany Lions suffered their first loss of the season on Saturday at Iowa by a 23-20 count.

The not-so-good news is that the weekly report card is not as encouraging following the first setback of the season, especially for an offense that musted only 95 yards in the second half after Ta'Quan Roberson had to replace Sean Clifford late in the first quarter due to injury.

"We talk about the important statistics that we talk about all the time, and we didn't do a very good job in any of them," head coach James Franklin said. "We didn't win the field position battle. We did not win the turnover battle. We did not win the penalty battle, and we did not win the explosive play battle.

"Obviously losing Cliff, PJ [Mustipher], [John] Lovett, [Devyn] Ford, and [Jonathan] Sutherland was significant in the game, but it's a next man up mentality, and we weren't ready for that on the road. We did not do a good job, and that starts with me."

Let's hand out the grades.

This is not going to turn into a Ta'Quan Roberson bash session. The backup is the backup for a reason, and he tried his best in one of the more impossible situations you could ask a second-teamer to enter into. So let's get that out of the way.

Roberson didn't get much help from his receivers, as tight end Brenton Strange dropped two passes and others didn't do much in terms of getting open. The offensive line was just a mess on far too many plays with presnap penalties galore, and there was positively no run game to speak of. The Lions rushed for a mere 66 yards in the second half, and 34 of those were from Roberson. How about this stat: The Lions' quarterbacks combined for 63 of the team's 107 rushing yards. Just another bad, bad day in that department.

There was a part of me that wanted to make this grade slightly higher, because the offense was fine when Clifford was in and built a 17-3 lead. But, after a 14-point, 155-yard first quarter, the team had just three and 37 in the second, and it really never got any better from there.

Ultimately, we've long wondered when or if Penn State's one-dimensional ways on offense would catch up to it, and the answer was they finally did and tonight. Sure, part of that is not having the starting quarterback for about 40 minutes of game action, but even if he was in, would Penn State have run the ball effectively? It's hard to say yes, and there were so many other problems (four turnovers, the false starts, etc.) that this grade feels justified, even if it is harsh.

It's challenging to give the defense an A in a game they didn't win, but we were quite close to doing so.

That's because this group did pretty much everything you could ask for to keep the Lions in it. Granted, Iowa is no juggernaut and it's hard to see the Hawkeyes making a deep postseason run because of it, but you still have to take care of business, and for the most part, PSU did.

Ellis Brooks had a terrific night, as did Jesse Luketa. The home team averaged only 2.4 yards per rush and the visitors had 11 tackles for loss and three sacks. As some of the players said after the game, they gave up too many points to win, and that's true on the scoreboard, but it's just hard to imagine asking more out of Brent Pry's unit on this night. They did all they could until Iowa made one terrific play call, and executed it to perfection, to win.

In the battle of truly terrific specialists, Jordan Stout was every bit as game as Iowa punter Tory Taylor and kicker Caleb Shudak.

Stout was perfect on his field goal and extra point tries and smashed three of his five punts more than 50 yards. He was often forced to punt from the shadow of or in his own end zone and always came through and flipped field position as best as he could, even if Taylor kept pinning the Lions deep himself.

It was another very solid game for No. 92, and his grade reflects that.

Penn State tried to alter its offense for Ta'Quan Roberson by switching to more of a read-option approach that allowed him to run more often than Sean Clifford would, but it still felt like they may have been able to do even more to play to Roberson's strengths. Of course, if a couple more passes are caught or a few penalties don't occur, maybe that could have been the case. The big ding here comes from how long it took to adjust the way the snaps were communicated. Backup or not, that simply has to happen sooner.

I read a lot of social media and forum banter that was frustrated with James Franklin, and I can get it to an extent, but it's hard to overlook all the injuries and adversity his team dealt with only to turn around and blame it all on him and the staff. That's why I didn't drop this grade as low as many of you probably think it should be. I do agree, though, that a lot of bad and familiar themes continue to pop up, especially on offense, over the last few weeks, and the penalties and sloppy play that killed many drives on this night rest with both the staff and the players.

The 'what if' part of this game is the most challenging one to decipher. Would Penn State have won easily if Sean Clifford did not get hurt? It feels likely, but we'll never know.

Then, there is the fact of how hard do you want to be, and how angry should fans get, over a three-point loss to the nation's No. 3 team at their place when three captains were lost for various parts of the game in addition to other injuries? The fact that the Lions kept it within three says plenty about them, and also of course about the Hawkeyes.

Overall, Penn State didn't play well enough to win, but it was close. Improvement is always needed, however, and that's especially the case after this one. The penalties must be corrected or the players making them replaced, the turnovers cannot pile up in the future like they did on this night, and the lack of a rushing attack in any way, shape, or form is and has been brutal, even if two backs were out.

Penn State will move on from and maybe even be better after experiencing this, but it won't take away the frustration and sting of losing any time soon.

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