Iowa Football: 3 takeaways from loss to Penn State

1. Nate Stanley’s performance

Throughout most of Big Ten play, Nate Stanley looked as if he was skyrocketing towards being one of the best quarterbacks in the Big Ten. Unfortunately, he came crashing back down to earth with his performance on Saturday, and it was anything but pretty. Stanley only completed 18 of 49 passes for 205 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions. For Iowa fans, it brought back memories of his inept performances against Michigan State and Wisconsin last season.

While his counterpart Trace McSorley didn’t play much better than him, Stanley’s stat line is eye-popping considering the which way runs their offense. The last time Iowa had a quarterback with as many passing attempts or more was Jake Rudock’s 56 pass attempts against Maryland in 2014, a game in which Iowa also lost.

But with all of this came a lot of heated and somewhat unnecessary criticism from the Hawkeye fanbase on social media, calling for his completely unnecessary and ridiculous benching. While he did have a bad performance yesterday, Nate has been a team leader all year and one bad performance isn’t going to change that. He will surely rebound next week at Purdue, and I, at least, have full confidence in him leading Iowa to Indianapolis.