Well, Penn State does play football this weekend as the Lions head to Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City for a Saturday night game. We’ve been off and on with interviewing our sister sites, but Black Heart Gold Pants came through this week. We welcome Jonah Parker as he tells us all we want to know about how the Hawkeyes are feeling heading into the weekend. You can also check out their site and my Q and A about our beloved Lions that is already posted.
1. Iowa used the bye week well apparently, bouncing
back from a tough home loss to IU to rout Wisconsin in Camp Randall. What stood out with Iowa in that game compared to the first five?
I’m going to try to not spend the entirety of this response dunking on Wisconsin, but it is a border rivalry so I feel compelled to start there. This is not your father’s Badger team or even your older sibling’s version of them. Luke Fickell has destroyed what I grew up knowing and hating about that program and for a second straight year, Iowa was able to bully the Badgers in a way they (Wisconsin) used to do to a good portion of the Big Ten.
Now, having said that, I think a couple things were key. First and foremost, the defense over the last couple weeks has really come into what we know as Phil Parker form. Early in the season, the defense was still finding its way, particularly in the back end. The front four have been solid all year, though not necessarily elite. But the back end had question marks and those questions have slowly been answered. Parker is being forced to blitz a bit more than he’s historically done, but it has worked the last two games with Iowa giving up a combined 20 points against Indiana and Wisconsin.
With the defense finding its way, and also finally creating some turnovers, the offense has been able to lean in on the running game. There have been a slew of injuries in the backfield, but Iowa is finding success pounding the rock in large part because they aren’t being put in a position where they really need to put the ball in harm’s way down the field.
2. Let’s start on offenses and Mark Gronowski grabbed a lot of the offseason headlines with his transfer? How’s he fit in? How’s his health? How will that Iowa offense try to attack a suddenly faltering Penn State defense?
Hawkeye fans have been on a roller coaster ride of emotions when it comes to portal QBs the last several years. We all had our hopes up with Cade McNamara and watched those get dashed with injuries. So there was some skepticism out there with Gronowski, but I would say muted a bit by the fact that Iowa found a way to win 10 games with Deacon Hill under center two years ago and pieced together eight wins last year despite injuries to McNamara and backup Brendan Sullivan.
Fast forward to week one with Gronowski coming off offseason surgery and you can insert the Me, Myself and Irene meme of Jim Carrey, “oh boy, here we go.” He looked a lot like McNamara in the early days – timing was off, throws were at the feet of receivers or 5 feet over their heads and when we occasionally saw WRs actually running free, he had already checked down to something underneath.
But over the last few weeks we saw him start to come into form as a passer and OC Tim Lester really lean into his rushing abilities. I think he had fully won over Hawkeye fans about the time he went down late against Indiana. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an Iowa fan who doesn’t believe his knee injury in the 4th quarter of that game is the difference between 4-2 unranked Iowa and 5-1, top-25 Iowa (For context given I assume most PSU fans aren’t watching Iowa weekly, the Hawkeyes were up 13-10 with just under 13 minutes left in the game when Gronowski was injured. Backup Hank Brown came in and threw a pick the next series. Despite the miscue, Iowa had the ball on IU’s 29 with just over 2 minutes remaining in a tie game. If Brown had simply been able to hit a wide open screen pass rather than throwing it into the dirt unpressured, Iowa either bleeds the clock or finds the endzone or both. Instead, they miss a 42-yarder and ultimately lose the game.)
The bye certainly helped Gronowski’s ability to get back for the Wisconsin matchup, but what we saw from him last week looked much more like what we got from him in week one. His accuracy wasn’t great, particularly down field, but more importantly, his ability to run was virtually non-existent. For most of the season, Mark has been great at extending plays and has been a real weapon in the redzone, leading the team with 8 rushing TDs. Against the Badgers, he ran a season-low four times for only nine yards.
Whether he is able to manipulate the pocket, evade pressure and extend plays against Penn State will be a big key to the game Saturday night.
3. Penn State is breaking in a first time starter at quarterback on Saturday night. Who are the defensive players that are going to make his life miserable?
This will certainly be interesting to watch. Phil Parker against first time starters is typically a big winner for Iowa, but like I mentioned earlier, this group has been a bit different than his past ones.
The front four is very solid, particularly against the run. Iowa is 5th nationally in rush defense, giving up just under 80 yards per game. A lot of that has been due to the big uglies up front. Most notable is Aaron Graves.
Interestingly, Graves is now tied for the team lead in interceptions at 1 after picking off Hunter Simmons a week ago and taking it 35 yards to the house (he was ruled down at the half yard line in a true travesty for big guys everywhere, but he scored in our hearts). He’s a big body in the middle with plenty of athleticism and a name to watch.
Coming off the edge, the two names to point out are Max Llewellyn and Ethan Hurkett. Hurkett is tied with Graves with a pair of sacks while Llewellyn leads the team with five on the year.
In the back end, TJ Hall is Iowa’s most experience corner and has the size to cover most any receiver, but has been notorious for finding himself out of position. Opposite him, Deshaun Lee is undersized and has been bullied at times by bigger WRs this year. It’s worth noting that Parker went to Zach Lutmer, more of a safety type, at corner for big portions of the Wisconsin game. I would expect the Nittany Lions to attack either Lutmer or Lee with regularity Saturday night.
And last but not least, while the corners are a weakness, Iowa’s safeties have been more of a mixed bag. Xavier Nwankpa is the only former 5-star on the roster and he has all the athleticism that you’d expect, but like Hall, he has been out of place more than Hawkeye fans have come to expect of a safety in Parker’s defense. Beside him will be Koen Entringer, who is maybe the opposite of Nwankpa in that he isn’t an uber athlete, but is almost always in the right place.
4. You might have heard this, but we are sort of going through it right now with the dismissal of the second most tenured Big Ten coach. The dean of all B1G coaches is still chugging along. How much longer do you truly think Kirk stays with it in Iowa City?
The blessing and curse of being a highly successful football program: expectations! In Iowa City, expectations are certainly a step below Happy Valley and for more than 25 years, KF has largely met expectations with far more instances of exceeding them than falling short. I think he has likely earned a pretty long leash from the AD at this point, barring any sort of scandal (like, say, hiring your son as the OC and keeping him on despite all evidence he is woefully unqualified, a racial discrimination lawsuit, or maybe several players being hospitalized following workouts – wait!), even if the fanbase is pretty split on the pros and cons of continuity vs. upside from change.
If it truly is left to Ferentz himself, I could see him sticking around until he really starts losing or feels like the game has changed too much for him to be interested. There was a part of me that thought NIL would be what turned him away, but I think what we’re seeing is Kirk’s NFL roots are perhaps making this new world more tenable for him than for some others. Iowa is never going to have the budget of the upper echelon of the Big Ten, but KF and his staff have been able to adapt enough to continue fielding a competitive roster without turning us into Wisconsin or Minnesota (I would take shame in sending strays their way unsolicited but these are two programs who spend time in the middle of a rivalry game for objectively the coolest trophy in college football to declare which side hates Iowa more so I’m going to continue to feel compelled to take my shots when I can).
I think he genuinely loves the teaching aspect of coaching and it just feels like you have to sort of be wired a certain way to be a successful P4 head coach. As Kirk would say, what other hobbies does he have? So to me, he’s likely here another 5+ years.
5. Kinnick. Night game. Inexperienced QB. How bad is it gonna be on Saturday night. Go ahead and give me a prediction.
Boy, this one is really tough. I could see it going a couple different ways and a lot of it is going to depend on how the Penn State players react to all the changes in Happy Valley. Weirdly, I think I would feel better if Franklin was still coaching and the team was dealing with the Allar injury and the potential of a coaching change rather than being able to rally around an interim HC. If they do rally around Smith and Grunkemeyer can keep his composure, I think Penn State likely comes out on top. At the end of the day, they have a more talented roster and there’s a reason one of these teams was a preseason top-5 team and one was unranked.
But on the other hand, Kinnick is blood thirsty. We haven’t had a ranked home win since the last time Penn State came to town in 2021 for the 4 vs 3 matchup and while the Nittany Lions are no longer ranked, having a night game and feeling like we were cheated out of our scalp against Indiana with the Gronowski injury, I expect the place to be electric. I would think the north endzone is good for at least three false starts.
If the building (and Phil Parker) can rattle Grunkemeyer and Kirk can lure Terry Smith into the rock fight, I think Iowa emerges victorious in another close one. If Grunkemeyer stays composed and PSU plays to their potential, they’re capable of jumping out to an early lead and forcing Iowa to play from behind – a style that simply aren’t built to play.
Ultimately, I’ll play the role of homer and say Iowa sneaks one out 20-17.
