The less said about Penn State’s miserable 2025 campaign, the better. The pre-season #2 team is now at the bottom of the Big 10 with just 3 wins out of their 9 games. While that’s that, it seems there is a change in the way they are playing now. Terry Smith seems to have found his rhythm as the team has come up with two back-to-back commendable performances. Freshman QB Ethan Grunkemeyer deserves much of the credit, as he has led the offense brilliantly in the absence of Drew Allar. And despite the backlash from the media and the fans, the QB has come out in support of his teammates.

While stating how proud he is to play alongside them, he showed the same confidence and defiance with which he faced the top two defenses in the country — and later, the media — after their 24–27 loss to the Indiana Hoosiers. The 20-year-old was by far the best performer for Penn State in the game against the Hoosiers, where he recorded a QBR of 78.4 with a 71% completion rate for 219 yards and a TD. And if this performance is anything to go by, then the opponents should be on the lookout.

The redshirt freshman said, “Yeah, before we start, I just wanna talk a little bit about just our team. I mean, we just played the number two team in the country. Got a top-five offense, top-five defense, and a Heisman contender at quarterback. So, just the questions about our buy-in as a team, I think right there, that just goes to show the commitment our team has. The guys in the locker room, that’s just a testament to those guys. We had two turnovers in our part of the field, and we still have the ball to go down and win the game. So just super proud of those guys in that locker room. And there isn’t anybody else that I wanna go to battle with. So I just wanna talk about that.”

He refused to bow down to the pressure and talked about how they were outplayed by Fernando Mendoza and the Hoosiers. Instead, he opted to focus on the impressive performance of his team. Not just that, they almost denied the Hoosiers their first Happy Valley win in school history. The Nittany Lions even led the Hoosiers 24-20 in the fourth quarter when Grunkemeyer connected with Nicholas Singleton for a 19-yard score with 6:27 to play.

With 36 seconds remaining, the unbeaten Indiana was riding on a lot, and of course, Omar Cooper Jr. came through as he jumped to catch a pass from Mendoza in the back of the end zone to go ahead of their opponent. Sure, Indiana won 27-24, but it appears almost criminal not to discuss how Penn State re-surged from 13 points down in the third quarter and was a couple of first downs away from the upset. However, that was just one aspect of the determination shown by Penn State.

Grunkeyemer completed a downfield pass early in the game, and that 43-yarder to Trebor Pena led to a tying touchdown. Additionally, Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen finally plowed through an opponent in the second half. In fact, much like the offense, the defense came through as well. Dani Dennis-Sutton gave his best performance off the edge since early September, while King Mack made a game-turning interception. To top that, much more aggression around scrimmage produced six first-half tackles for loss against a team giving up barely three a game.

Despite the mega effort put in by the team, Terry Smith looked disappointed after the game as he confessed to suffering a tough loss. Although he also sounded optimistic, as the players finally seemed to calm down and rally around him, he talked about all this when he interacted with the media after the Indiana game.

Terry Smith makes an emotional statement after a heartbreaking loss to #2 Hoosiers

“Tough loss. Very, very difficult one to handle,” he said. “The locker room is taking it very tough… I’m super proud of the effort that our guys put out there. These guys play hard. I feel awful for them.” The disappointment was pretty evident in his voice. While he talked about resetting and restarting, it won’t be easy, as a loss like this is bound to sting.

After the impressive outing against No. 1 OSU last week, where they led in the first half and showed a lot of promise. Terry Smith and his boys would have entered today’s contest with the belief needed to win. But sadly, it wasn’t enough as they had to sit through their 6th straight loss of the season.

But all is not lost for the Nittany Lions, as these two performances give them the push necessary to improve for the remainder of the season. They will look to salvage some pride by going strong in their last three games against Michigan State, Nebraska, and Rutgers. Given that all three teams are unranked, there’s still hope for the Nittany Lions.

And if anything, Terry Smith would hope the rest of the team follows Grunkemeyer’s lead and shows up in the coming fixtures.