Through Penn State’s 3-0 start with wins over Marshall, Temple, and Nevada, the Nittany Lions have strangely struggled to convert long drives into touchdowns. The Rocco Becht-led offense ranks No. 5 in the country in available yards percentage and No. 10 in points per drive, but is No. 112 in red zone touchdown rate and No. 110 in red zone scoring rate.
It’s a fairly small sample with 17 red zone trips so far this season, and Penn State went 4/5 in Week 3, converting red zone trips into touchdowns and 5/5 turning them into points. The numbers are largely impacted by two trips inside the Temple 10-yard line in the first quarter of Week 2, resulting in zero points because of a missed field goal and a turnover on downs.
Still, with such lackluster competition through the first three games, any negative stat jumps out as a red flag. Is it a massive issue? That remains to be seen and could be answered in Week 4 with Wisconsin coming to town, but until then, it’s at least worth exploring the problems and potential solutions. Maybe unsurprisingly, both point back to the quarterback.
Rocco Becht isn’t a great red zone quarterback
Last season, Iowa State ranked No. 58 in red zone touchdown percentage, and in 2024, Becht’s most prolific year in Ames, it was No. 56. There are more moving pieces than just the quarterback, but when Taylor Mouser ran the ball as much as he did in the red zone last year, it signals a potential lack of trust in the QB.
Red zone | 2026 Penn State | 2025 Iowa State |
|---|---|---|
Run rate | 46% 128th | 78.1% 17th |
Pass rate | 53% 10th | 21.9% 120th |
Touchdown% | 52.9% 112th | 62.8% 58th |
This year at Penn State, Mouser is throwing it much more, and those numbers exclude garbage time, so that’s almost exclusively with Becht in the game. So far, he’s 4/9 for 43 yards and two touchdowns, and he hasn’t turned the ball over. When the windows get tighter in the red zone, those aren’t necessarily bad numbers, but they’re far from stellar, especially against three G6 defenses.
The way Becht plays the position is so heavily reliant on the threat of verticality, and that’s lost in the red zone. He loves to rip in-breaking throws to the intermediate part of the field, which is only possible if the safeties have to respect the possibility of being beaten over the top. Otherwise, when he’s not making those anticipatory throws, he loves to pick his matchups pre-snap and trust his receivers to win.
He does the same thing in the red zone, even more so, and that can lead him to miss open receivers because he’s good, not great, at progressing through full-field reads.
Penn State ranks No. 112 in the FBS in red zone touchdown percentage at 53%
— Josh Yourish (@JYourish3) September 21, 2026
That's with a 53% pass rate in the red zone (was 22% at Iowa State last year). 2/3 on TDs in Week 3 with Rocco Becht in the game, but he left some meat on the bone here. pic.twitter.com/b1iFTEgUAP
However, that’s only part of why Iowa State’s red zone run rate was so high last year. The other aspect is Becht’s legs, which haven’t come into play at all this season. He had eight rushing touchdowns in each of the last two years, nearly all of them in the red zone, either off scrambles or designed carries.
Rocco Becht needs to use his legs in the red zone
That adds a critically important element to the offense, but for a 6-foot-1, 208-pound QB, it also adds a significant element of risk. He played nearly the entire 2025 season with two shoulder injuries. Mouser has clearly wanted to mitigate that risk in the early part of the season, but at some point, it seems he’ll need to take the restrictor plate off.
So far this year, Becht has run the ball seven times for 12 yards (stripping out sacks). Four of those seven runs have been scrambles. He hasn't been used in the designed run game hardly at all. When Mouser decides to press that button will be interesting to monitor this year, and the effect it has on the red zone offense could have a meaningful impact on the outcome of this season.
Is it go-time now that Big Ten play is here? Or is Mouser saving Becht’s legs for USC in Week 6 and Michigan in Week 7? And does that entirely solve the problem? Because it never made Iowa State elite in that department, merely passable.
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