Penn State football wanted revenge on Iowa. It got that and much ...

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — All week, Penn State players and coaches dismissed questions about the Nittany Lions’ loss to Iowa at Kinnick Stadium in 2021.

Their recollections and the lessons learned from that dreaded night in Iowa City were supposed to be irrelevant now. The booing of injuries and the back and forth that followed, from Kirk Ferentz accusing Penn State players of flopping to James Franklin asking why they’d try to slow down an offense that’s anything but up-tempo, was put to bed. This is a different team, with too many new faces. Water under the bridge.

Did anyone actually believe it?

At around 11:30 p.m. Saturday inside the Penn State media room, the cat was let out of the bag. Yes, No. 7 Penn State’s 31-0 thrashing of No. 24 Iowa in front of a White Out crowd of 110,830 was indeed personal. This wasn’t just any opponent. This was a program that mocked their former teammates. To quote the most quotable man in college football these days, Deion Sanders, Iowa made it personal.

“Coach Franklin has hammered — this team especially — it’s been something brewing for the past two years since we went to their house,” said defensive end Dani Dennis-Sutton. Dennis-Sutton was a high-schooler in 2021, but that didn’t matter.

“(Franklin) showed us some of the same things that they did in 2021 with the special teams coordinator on the sideline flopping and stuff like that. Their head coach was saying stuff that they smelled a rat or something when some of our guys went down.”

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Underline it. Highlight it. Circle it. Mark it with an exclamation point. Penn State, the master of the “1-0 each week” mentality, wanted to put on a masterclass against the Hawkeyes, believed by many to be the Big Ten West’s top team. It did just that. Penn State got revenge, and in doing so it showed anyone watching that this is a damn good Nittany Lions team, too.

The Hawkeyes posted just 76 yards of total offense. Penn State ran 97 plays to Iowa’s 33. Per TruMedia, during the past five seasons no other FBS team has been out-snapped by 60 or more plays. The Nittany Lions controlled the clock, a dizzying 45:27 to 14:33. Iowa had just four first downs. Drew Allar — standing on the sideline for most of the fourth quarter as backup Beau Pribula entered — completed 25-of-37 passes for 166 yards and four touchdowns. Allar remains turnover-free at Penn State.

A word of warning to the rest of Penn State’s opponents: Franklin’s most talented and deepest roster to date clearly doesn’t need any extra motivation or bulletin board material. Though it certainly found some this week thanks to the 2021 fiasco, this group is dangerous enough to make plenty of noise on its own.

“We’re doing a really good job right now of being efficient and staying on track,” Allar said. “We do get into situations where we aren’t ourselves with penalties, but I think we’ll continue to learn and grow with those mistakes that we make. But I think we’re doing a really good job right now just taking what the defense is giving us and taking care of the ball.”

KeAndre Lambert-Smith led Penn State with eight catches and a TD. (Matthew O’Haren / USA Today)

Manny Diaz’s defense has been the security blanket for Allar and this offense as it figures itself out. The occasional lull has been forgotten about because of the takeaways the Nittany Lions are producing. Give a young quarterback and this offense a halftime’s worth of adjustments, and it just might come out of the locker room humming like Penn State did in the second half against Iowa.

Penn State is still a work in progress, as all teams are, but the more looks we get at this team, the more it’s clear that how the Nittany Lions are playing right now — with an offense that’s starting to figure itself out alongside a standout defense — is a recipe for success.

“We put a priority on athleticism (on defense),” Franklin said. “There probably are a few bigger defenses, but we are athletic. We’re quick and we’re fast and we’re explosive. We’re playing more consistent gap-sound defense. Manny is doing a great job.”

Diaz installed a new third-down package in which defensive ends Chop Robinson, Dennis-Sutton and Adisa Isaac took the field together. They grinned when Diaz explained it to them this week.

“No center or guard should be able to block a defensive end,” Robinson said. “… It’s hard for an offense when you see three defensive ends on the field. You don’t know where to slide to or where to block. I think it’s confusing the offense a lot.”

Robinson was a menace against the Hawkeyes, rushing from the inside and outside. He even bull-rushed his way through the interior of the Iowa offensive line. He had two tackles, a strip-sack and two quarterback hurries. Dennis-Sutton finished with a quarterback hurry and a forced fumble. Isaac had a sack, a quarterback hurry and a fumble recovery. Penn State plans to continue figuring out different ways to deploy Robinson’s quickness and power moving forward, Franklin said. It worked brilliantly against Iowa.

As Diaz explained the wrinkle with the three ends this week, Robinson thought about what he’d do if he made a game-altering play. He smiled Saturday night when asked what his on-field celebration was after his strip-sack of Cade McNamara late in the third quarter.

“I flopped twice,” Robinson said matter-of-factly. “That came from two years ago when Iowa played Penn State. … The special teams coordinator flopped on the sideline I guess because he was saying it was a fake injury. We don’t take that type of disrespect.”

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Robinson was suiting up for Maryland two years ago. Still, he knew what this game meant. They all did. Teammates saw to it that faces new and old were aware. Franklin did too. Even the Penn State fans who booed the Hawkeyes as they took the field Saturday night sounded like they too gave it a little extra oomph.

Penn State followed through with the kind of beatdown that kept the season on course and left one former Nittany Lion beaming on the other side of a FaceTime call.

In the locker room minutes after the win, Dennis-Sutton and defensive tackle Dvon Ellies got ahold of PJ Mustipher on FaceTime. It was Mustipher, the former Penn State captain, who tore his ACL that night in Iowa City but was booed while he was down.

Yes, this win was sweet for Mustipher, too.

“PJ was excited for us to get his get-back,” Dennis-Sutton said.

(Top photo of Theo Johnson: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)