Take away two plays — Eric McCoo's scintillating 28-yard run just before the end of the half, and the nifty double-play action pass from Matt Senneca to Larry Johnson for a 50-yard touchdown — and you have one of the worst offensive performances ever by a Penn State team.

Keep them, and it's not that great either.

The Nittany Lions totaled 131 yards of offense in 45 plays during Saturday's 18-6 loss to Wisconsin, 78 of them in those two plays. Despite shuffling different quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers and offensive linemen in and out of the lineup, coach Joe Paterno and the Lions could not get anything going offensively.

"We didn't execute," said quarterback Zack Mills. "It's not the coaches' fault. Once bad things happening, they just keep on rolling."

Or hardly rolling anywhere at all. Twenty-three net yards rushing — on 25 attempts. One hundred eight passing. Eight sacks allowed, for a combined loss of 60 yards. The Lions had possession of the ball for just 18 minutes and seven seconds.

Matt Senneca started the game at quarterback, and couldn't move the offense. Nor could Mills. In fact, the officials moved the ball backward because of penalties almost more often than the Lions moved it forward.

The offense was stagnant throughout much of the Miami game, but Mills did throw for more than 200 yards in the second half. Saturday, though, the Lions made Wisconsin's defense, which had been allowing more than 370 yards per game, look stingy.

Afterward, the Lions tried to pick up the pieces.

"I don't think you can ever pinpoint one thing as the problem," said guard Tyler Lenda. "I wish it was that easy. I think there's just little breakdowns everywhere. There's just some adjustments we're going to have to make."

Like converting third downs. While the Badgers were a stellar 10-of-17 on third downs, Penn State was a woeful 1-9.

"It was just something we didn't execute well on," Mills said. "We had the opportunity to make a couple third-down conversions and we just didn't do it. That's the bottom line, we just didn't do it."

The bottom line is, the Lions have to start finding some answers offensively — and fast. Penn State travels to Iowa City next week, where it will face a Hawkeyes squad averaging 47.5 points per game.

"We have to start playing up to our potential," Lenda said. "Why that's not happening all the time, I don't know."

To make matters worse, the offensive line suffered its third casualty of the season. Starting guard Greg Ransom suffered a hairline collarbone fracture. He's the third starter in that unit to succumb to an injury this season, and the Lions have played just two games.

It could get worse before it gets better, unless the players start to step it up.

"We have to play better than that and it's my job to get them ready to play better than that," Paterno said. "But I have to play guys that want to get better."