The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Reviewing Penn State football’s 22-10 win over Clemson

Penn State closed out its 2025 season with a 22-10 Pinstripe Bowl win over Clemson to end Terry Smith’s tenure as the Nittany Lions’ interim head coach.

Let’s take a look at the good, the bad and the ugly from Saturday afternoon’s matchup in Yankee Stadium.

Good

Dani Dennis-Sutton: It wasn’t in the game everyone thought it would be at the beginning of the season, but it’s hard to have a better game to end a college career than Dennis-Sutton did against Clemson. He moved past Abdul Carter and Matt Millen on the program’s all-time sack leaderboard after registering two in the game, but secured his status in program history by playing when many others chose not to. I still believe in Dennis-Sutton as a player who will go in the first two days of the 2026 NFL Draft, and teammates of his who may go undrafted chose to opt out of the game. But there he was on Saturday, playing a high number of snaps at maximum effort for 60 minutes. Generally speaking, I’m good with players opting out, but Dennis-Sutton does deserve credit for not doing so.

Ethan Grunkemeyer: I’ve been critical of Grunkemeyer’s play in the past, and thought offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki simplified the offense down the stretch of the regular season to take things off his quarterback’s plate and make everything easier. But on Saturday, the redshirt freshman strongly made the case that he should be the program’s starting quarterback moving forward. His ball placement was excellent and his arm strength was on display with some deep shots and intermediate throws that cut through the cold air in Yankee Stadium. Most impressively, he kept his composure behind an offensive line that was missing four of its five starters, steadily working through his reads without panicking that pressure would be closing in on him. It remains to be seen where Grunkemeyer will be next season, but he should be a starter for a Power Four program.

Quinton Martin Jr.: There was no room for any running back success at Penn State this season outside of Kaytron Allen and Nick Singleton, with how many snaps they (deservedly) took. But with neither playing in Saturday’s game, the door was opened for one of the team’s young backs to step up, and it was Martin who took the lead. He’s tall for a running back at 6-foot-1, but was able to make plays on outside runs and between the tackles while avoiding defenders diving at his legs. Martin was decisive, seeing holes and hitting them on wide zone plays that were designed for him to cut up the field as soon as he was the first gap. And while, like seemingly everyone else, his future is uncertain, he has given fans plenty of reason to believe he can be the next starting running back at Penn State if he chooses to remain with the Nittany Lions.

Young corners: Two players who should be high up on new head coach Matt Campbell’s roster retention priority list had excellent games on Saturday. Freshmen corners Jahmir Joseph and Daryus Dixson looked the part of high-level starters to close out their first year of college football, and while Campbell will likely bring in a corner or two from Iowa State, those two should be able to compete with any of them. They combined for four pass breakups (Dixson had three of them) and played with the confidence necessary at a position where play from week to week, and even snap to snap, can be very volatile. It would make a lot of sense if Penn State paid what was necessary to retain two young players at a very important position in modern college football.

Bad

Cade Klubnik: I wasn’t a Klubnik believer coming into the season, and nothing he did in a disappointing year at Clemson changed that. There are some Penn State parallels here, with he and Drew Allar coming in as five-star recruits and highly-touted returning starters this season who were expected to take the next step in their development to become contenders to go first overall in the 2026 NFL Draft, but it never happened for Allar because of performance and then injury and Klubnik was never able to put it together on the field for the Tigers. Now, I don’t believe that’s entirely on him. He’s a good but not great starter who was not utilized well in an offense that didn’t take enough advantage of his mobility, whether that’s as a runner or getting him on the move to complete passes. But still, he never took that step, and now he and Allar are going to go down as two of the biggest what-ifs of the college football season.

Ugly

What’s to come: This roster is going to look very different moving forward. That starts with Grunkemeyer who, like I said, deserves to be a starter next year and compensated like one too. But it’s going to trickle down to every position. Campbell has to decide which Penn State players he wants to keep around, which Iowa State players who entered the portal he wants to bring in (there are plenty of them in there) and which outside talents from other schools he wants to add to supplement the roster. That’s all to say, it’s going to be a very messy few weeks from a roster construction standpoint, and Saturday was the final time many Penn State players will play for the Nittany Lions because of it. There will be moments of surprise and frustration for fans as talented players enter the portal and depart for other schools (some even for rival programs) but it’s worth waiting until that entire process plays out to judge how Campbell and his staff have done. And as far as who is going to go in and who is going to end up where, it’s safe to say almost every player on the roster is a potential transfer candidate until the portal window closes on Jan. 16.

Jon Sauber

Centre Daily Times

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Jon Sauber covers Penn State football and men’s basketball for the Centre Daily Times. He earned his B.A. in digital and print journalism from Penn State and his M.A. in sports journalism from IUPUI. His previous stops include jobs at The Indianapolis Star, the NCAA, and Rivals.