First off, gradulations to Iowa. No excuses this year. You came into the soggy whitehouse and put the beatdown on Penn State.
With that out of the way, we now look inward at what went wrong. I said before the game it was going to come down to turnovers and field position. Penn State turned the ball over four times, had a punt blocked, and gave up a safety. It's too hard to win a game in the Big Ten when you perform like that.
Daryll Clark had his worst day as a starter completing only 12-of-32 passes and giving up three interceptions. He's the easy target for the goat in this game, but this was a total team loss. It's not his fault the offensive line gave him 0.3 miliseconds to throw the ball. It's not his fault his receivers like the tip his passes up in the air. It's not his fault they only called one deep throw the rest of the game after completing the first pass for an 80 yard touchdown. It's not his fault the punt coverage team let a man run untouched to block a punt.
In fairness I thought the defense played their hearts out. They clung on to that 10-0 lead as long as they could. But when your six second half drives go Interception, missed field goal, blocked punt returned for a touchdown, interception, fumble, interception, there's only so much you can do. They played short handed with their backs up against the wall all night and really couldn't have done a better job.
There's going to be a lot of soul searching this week. The optimist will say we lost to Iowa last year and still went to the Rose Bowl. What are the odds Daryll Clark and Evan Royster combine for four turnovers again? But I think it's time to lower expectations for this team. This offensive line is clearly not ready for Big Ten play yet. The wide receivers are just not consistent enough. I'm not one of these fans who think the sky is falling and we're not going to win another game, but I'm taking a wait and see approach to this team until I see more consistency.
Fuel up the struggle bus, people. It's going to be a bumpy ride.