Penn State 22, Clemson 10: A Fine Finish

Penn State’s tumultuous 2025 football season came to a close Saturday afternoon in Yankee Stadium.

Thankfully, it ended with a fourth straight win, a little bit of fun, and some big plays from both familiar faces and some guys who were thrown into the fire.

Ethan Grunkemeyer threw two touchdown passes in the final quarter and the Lions clinched a winning season with a 22-10 win against Clemson. It was Penn State’s second Pinstripe Bowl win, the other famously coming at the end of James Franklin’s first season.

The Lions were clinging to a 9-3 lead early in the fourth quarter and facing a third-and-long. Grunkemeyer delivered a strike to Trebor Peña, who escaped some weak tackling and raced through the Yankee Stadium outfield for what wound up being a 73-yard scoring run.

Clemson answered with its only scoring drive of the day to cut the lead to 15-10. But Penn State answered with a gorgeous 75-yard drive that was capped by a Grunk to Andrew Rappleyea touchdown to put the Lions back up by two scores.

Grunkemeyer finished with 262 yards passing and two scores, making a clear statement that he should be in consideration for the starting quarterback job at Penn State in 2026 as Matt Campbell takes over with some questions about who might be in the room.

Meanwhile, it was Quinton Martin, Jr. who made his own statement at running back. The redshirt freshman had his first 100-yard rushing game as neither Nicholas Singleton nor Kaytron Allen played. Penn State’s patchwork offensive line was mostly good as the Lions were able to run the ball relatively well and Grunkemeyer mostly had time to throw.

Dani Dennis-Sutton played the full game at defensive end and led the Penn State defense with two sacks. Vaboue Toure and Jaylen Harvey also had sacks for the Lions, who hounded Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnick all day long.

The first half set was littered with mistakes from both squads in a sloppy 30 minutes that saw Penn State take a 6-3 lead to the clubhouse.

Penn State scored the game’s first points, but that was because they had a short field after an ill-fated Clemson fake punt. The Lions drove to inside the five-yard line, but were stuffed on three straight running plays and settled for a short Ryan Barker field goal.

Clemson’s offense was hindered by drops, but found enough yardage to twice drive into Penn State territory in the second quarter. However, they were forced to settle for field goal attempts twice, missing one and then making one in the half’s closing moments.

There was just enough time for Penn State to put together an impressive drive without any timeouts, covering enough ground in a minute to give Barker a chance to make a long field goal for the quarter’s final points.

The third quarter provided little more action as neither team scored, though Penn State did start a drive that would culminate with Barker’s third field goal of the game that gave the Lions a 9-3 lead.