Monday Musings: Iowa's offense, Clifford's mobility, tight ends and more

Penn State Nittany Lions football is looking ahead to a battle of top-5 teams in Iowa City this Saturday.

To wrap up Indiana week with an eye toward that titanic clash, let's dive into this week's Monday Musings.

I write a story after every Penn State game on what the opposition had to say about how the Nittany Lions played. To do that, I typically spend time in the opposition media room listening to those coaches and players speak before moving on to James Franklin.

Something that stood out to me Saturday night listening to Tom Allen and the Indiana players is something we've rarely discussed this season. They had a very difficult time dealing with Sean Clifford and his scrambling ability. His readiness to take off, to extend the play, was a real problem for them.

After Penn State ran the ball over and over again with its quarterbacks last season, it might not seem to take up as significant a piece of the offense. But Clifford carried the ball 10 times for 58 yards Saturday night. He has 136 yards for the season — 51 yards behind Noah Cain as Penn State's leading rusher. And remember, that total includes all the negative yardage from sacks.

This is something Clifford is, and has always been, capable of, and it seems like it gets left out of the discussion too often when he talk about his game as a whole.

After his touchdown catch on Saturday night, I asked Penn State tight end Brenton Strange what the tight end group needed to do to produce that type of result a little bit more consistently.

He answered the question with grace, but from the look on his face I could tell he thought that the question missed the mark a little bit.

So I followed up.

"Are you guys doing things well that we're not seeing?" I asked.

"As a tight end, we do a lot of behind the scenes work," Strange said. "We impact the run game a lot, the passing game and pass pro too. There's a lot of behind the scenes work that our teammates notice that maybe you guys don't."

And he's right. Tyler Warren, for example, has the best run blocking grade among Big Ten East tight ends according to Pro Football Focus among those with enough reps to qualify with a 73.7. He's also playing quarterback in a Wildcat package. Strange came through with that touchdown against the Hoosiers. Theo Johnson had a great catch and run for 20 yards.

Maybe it's OK that there might not be a Pat Freiermuth or Mike Gesicki in this group yet. Penn State is winning games, and all three tight ends are contributing in their own way.

For the second time in five weeks, Jordan Stout earned a share of the Big Ten special teams player of the week honor.

And it was fully deserved. Every kickoff resulted in a touchback, he connected on a 50-yard field goal and he punted six times for 278 yards.

He is the seventh most effective punter in college football at the moment, averaging 48.5 yards per punt. Indiana's players remarked after the game that his punts go so high in the air that they are very difficult to catch, so maybe watch out this week and down the line for a returner to eventually make a mistake that Penn State can capitalize on.

So much of the gameweek discussion heading into this top-five tilt on Saturday inside Kinnick Stadium is going to revolve around how Penn State goes about asserting its style of play on the Hawkeyes — specifically on offense.

My question is: Does Penn State need to?

Iowa is dead last in the Big Ten in total offense. Rutgers, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota — some of the usual suspects — are all better. Iowa's points have come from field position created by 16 total turnovers, including seven last week against Maryland.

Let's say Penn State tightens it up, and plays super conservative football to avoid turning it over at all costs — like they tried to do toward the back end of last season. With the way their defense is playing, I think they can win this game that way.

I'm not advocating for it as the correct approach, but, in a selfish way, I think it would be interesting to see this game play out that way. Penn State could absolutely win this game 14-10, in my view.

ESPN's Bill Connelly projects Penn State football to have the second-hardest schedule in college football by the time the season wraps up — behind only Indiana.

We don't know how this season is going to play out, less than halfway in.

But if this is indeed the year Penn State finds a way into the College Football Playoff — my goodness, they will have earned it.

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