Here’s 3 takeaways from Penn State football’s 41-21 loss to Iowa at Beaver Stadium
Penn State’s horrific 2020 season continues to trend downward. The Nittany Lions were blown out by the Iowa Hawkeyes Saturday evening in Beaver Stadium, 41-21.
The loss drops the team to 0-5 on the season and is the first 0-5 start in program history.
Let’s take a look at three takeaways from the loss.
1. Penn State’s defense played poorly
The Nittany Lions have been a football program that has boasted one of the best defenses in the country in recent years. Saturday evening — and most of the season — it looks more like a program that needs to overcome its porous defense in order to win games.
That — combined with the bad offense — is why Penn State has yet to win a game this season. The defense has struggled in all aspects so far this season. Run-heavy teams beat it up the middle and on the edges. Pass-heavy teams take advantage of the team’s poor coverage. Right now, there is no answer for opposing offenses and that’s a bad place for Penn State to be this season.
2. Sean Clifford looked like a new quarterback...
Late in the third quarter Penn State made the decision to make a change at quarterback. Redshirt sophomore Will Levis was pulled from the game in favor of redshirt junior Sean Clifford. Clifford, who started the team’s first four games, looked like he was playing with newfound confidence early in his appearance Saturday evening.
His first play was a pass to tight end Brenton Strange for a touchdown. His second was even more impressive, finding an open Jahan Dotson deep downfield to cut it to a two-score deficit against the Hawkeyes. Clifford couldn’t have started his appearance in the game any better.
3. ... until he didn’t
But things went downhill from there. The next drive ended with a Clifford interception on a pass that was batted into the air at the line of scrimmage. Then he threw the ball into a waiting defender with just over two minutes left to give Iowa a 41-21 lead. He struggled with accuracy and feel for the pocket through the rest of the game.
The redshirt junior looked slightly better than he had in his first four games this year, but he still didn’t look like a starting-caliber quarterback. It remains to be seen what Penn State intends to do at quarterback moving forward, but it appears the first two choices aren’t up to the standard that can take the Nittany Lions where they want to go in the future.
This story was originally published November 21, 2020 at 6:57 PM.
