One of the most spectacular plays of this Penn State football season through five games took place on an eight yard run.
There was nothing crazy about the run itself— it didn’t even lead to a touchdown— but what happened away from the ball got a lot of people talking.
There aren’t a lot of people that are 6-foot-4, 348-pounds and athletic enough to go into motion on a Power Four football team like Penn State.
Vega Ioane is one of those people.
It hasn’t been too abnormal of an occurrence to see first-year offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki send the starting left guard into motion through four full games, and he did it again against UCLA.
A poor defender, Luke Schuerman (6-foot-4, 255 pound) ended up paying for it when Ioane overpowered him, then gave finished the play with an extra push.
#PennState sends OL Vega Ioane (@vegaioane17) is motion and he destroys the #UCLA defender TWICE.
👉 https://t.co/m3esAVFkB0 pic.twitter.com/mAYEg4CWHF
— Penn State Nittany Lions | Happy Valley Insider (@PennStateRivals) October 5, 2024
From the video, it looks like Ioane was celebrating the block.
But that wasn’t what happened, per the man himself.
“I only reacted like that because I thought we scored on the play,” Ioane said. “It would have been a lot cooler if we had scored. I hit him and I put him down again, and I turned around and thought we scored. So I turned around and got the crowd hyped a little bit and I looked up and we didn’t score. They were replaying the play, so I thought it was pretty cool.”
For Ioane, the chance to hit somebody like that is part of what makes gameday great because it wouldn’t happen during practice.
“To me, personally, I take it more than just a block. It’s a good thing that I’ve got the trust of our offensive coordinator to put me out there, making a block like that,” Ioane said after the win. “Being safe in practice, I ain’t hitting anybody like that. But when we’re in game, that’s the time to let it loose. I was out there lined up, I looked across, I saw who I was gonna hit.”
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.And how did Ioane react when he saw it.
“I was like, ‘Alright, it’s time to go now. He motioned me in — y’all see it. Y’all saw what happened.”
Ioane, of course, deserves the lion’s share of credit for this but Kotelnicki deserves his flowers, too.
Just as there aren’t a lot of linemen— or humans, for that matter— at Ioane’s size that can move the way he does, there aren’t a lot of offensive coordinators who would line a right guard up at slot receiver.
Ioane made sure to show his appreciation for the first-year OC.
“I just started thanking him,” he said jokingly. “I saw him after the game in the locker room while we were celebrating. He told me it was a good job. I just looked at him, gave him a hug. I was like, ‘Thank you. That’s you.’”
Oh, you bet Ioane’s Penn State teammates noticed, too.
“We kind of knew whoever had to take on that block was gonna be hurting for a couple hours after that. It was kind of crazy,” wide receiver Harrison Wallace III said. “I like how we can insert plays like that just to out-physical our opponent.”
Wallace also said that this wasn’t the hardest Ioane’s hit a player, if you could believe that.
“There’s one behind the scenes y’all haven’t seen,” he said.
