Sunday Column: One Pass Turns the Tide of the Game, and Perhaps the Season

There was a moment late in Saturday’s game when Iowa running back Tyler Goodson picked up decent yardage and, on his way back to the huddle, took some time to strut and pound his chest, as a crammed Kinnick Stadium wildly roared its approval, the momentum firmly on the side of the home team.

Penn State linebacker Ellis Brooks, a few feet away, watched Goodson with a somewhat incredulous look on his face, as though he were wondering if his opponent had forgotten about the three previous hours, when the Nittany Lion defense had Goodson and the Hawkeye offense in figurative shackles.

Look, let’s give Goodson and his teammates and crusty old Kirk Ferentz and the Kinnick crazies their collective due for Iowa’s very Iowa 23-20 win on Saturday. Let’s also not pretend that, if not for one incomplete pass early in the second quarter, this game was well on its way to a wholly different result.

For Iowa, Saturday was one of those nights that probably felt very much like destiny, and could remain so if a solid if not spectacular group manages to keep winning this season. For Penn State, it was another road disappointment against a top-10 program and an icy cold reminder, even on a warm October afternoon, of how quickly the tides can turn in this sport.

It was also Sean Clifford Appreciation Night.

No. 14 has, as has been chronicled here and various other corners of the Penn State football world, enjoyed a long and rarely smooth ride as the Lions’ starting quarterback over the past three seasons. He provided a fairly accurate microcosm of those peaks and valleys in the first quarter alone, tossing a galaxy-brain pick on his team’s first snap of the day, then recovering to lead a pair of touchdown drives and making a very good Iowa defense look very ordinary in the process.

Then came the third-down pass from the Iowa 14-yard line. Clifford, moving to his left, rifled a throw a bit too high — likely because he couldn’t complete his follow-through — and through the hands of a leaping Brenton Strange, just before absorbing a hard shot from Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell.

The Nittany Lions added a Jordan Stout field goal to extend their lead to 17-3, but Clifford went to the locker room a few moments later and wasn’t seen again until the second half, when he’d traded his pads and jersey for a team-issued T-shirt and his helmet for an expression that became more subdued the more he watched his offensive teammates in the second half.

For the first five games of the season, while the Penn State defense was doing its domination thing, Clifford and wide receiver Jahan Dotson were keeping the offense afloat, with big plays or improvisations or both. Their play and some clever designs from Mike Yurcich masked some serious deficiencies in the rest of the offensive operation.

When Clifford went out, those deficiencies fell, heavily, on the inexperienced shoulders of Ta’Quan Roberson, who did not have a good night but had basically no chance of finishing off this win. With every snap, every yellow flag fluttering to the turf, both sidelines and the crowd knew it with a little more certainty. Yurcich tried to help, using tempo and some quick read throws to try to establish some rhythm, but that only went so far. A defense that sorely missed an injured P.J. Mustipher nearly as much as the offense missed Clifford tried to pick up the slack — and, somehow, did until the final seven minutes — but eventually ran out of gas as Iowa continued to shrink the field.

The Hawkeyes knew, as John Buford did at Gettysburg, that they had the high ground, that it was a matter of time before gravity won out. The Nittany Lions knew that, even with the lead, it was an uphill battle, and they tripped over their own feet too much to establish any sort of momentum. John O’Neill has made more than his share of eyebrow-raising calls that didn’t go in Penn State’s favor over the years, but the eight false-start penalties — all with Roberson at QB — the Nittany Lions piled up left no room for interpretation or argument.

Could have and should have the Nittany Lions had Roberson better prepared for emergency spot duty than they did? Probably. But the offense’s implosion was more a sign that Clifford and Dotson were the glue and duct tape holding a suspect unit together than an indictment of its young backup. If this Penn State offense was truly elite, a true tandem partner to its incredible defense, it might not have been able to survive Clifford’s injury — but it would have at least put up a fight.

The good news is that the Nittany Lions have a bye week to lick their numerous wounds and speed up Roberson’s development, and that there are still enough marquee opponents left on their schedule that a path to the playoff is still visible, if not as clear as it looked in early in the second quarter. They handle business at Ohio State and Michigan State and at home against Michigan, and they could get a chance to see Goodson and the Hawkeyes again.

The bad news is that QB2 isn’t the only position that needs some serious work, and that a chance for another big win in what had felt, at various junctures, like one of those destiny type of seasons slipped away, a punt at a time. Penn State should now truly appreciate Clifford. It should appreciate its defense even more than it already had, if that’s even possible. None of that appreciation, though, will make this loss a win, or keep the Nittany Lions from thinking how very easily it all could have been so different.