The Penn State coaching staff has a unique job over the next week or so:
Give their players a needed break during a bye week while keeping their focus enough not to disrupt their tremendous momentum.
The Lions didn't practice on Monday after the Ohio State victory, then had a light workout on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday practices are with pads, but the focus will be on developing younger, backup talent, said coach Joe Paterno.
The team will get Friday, Saturday and Sunday off before coming back to work on Monday to get ready for Iowa.
"I think they need some time off, not only physically, they need some time off mentally," Paterno said. "There's an awful lot of pressure when you are going through what we're going through. And you can't let up on them. It isn't as if they can come out to practice and you can horse around completely. ... You've got to be careful because it's just, you know, one mistake, one slip.
"And we're going to try to give them as much time off as we can without going backwards. We can't afford to go backwards because we got a long ways to go yet."
A key will be getting quarterback Daryll Clark ready to play again after suffering a concussion in the second half at Ohio State. He left the game early in the fourth quarter and did not return.
He is being held out of practice for a couple of days this week as a precautionary measure.
"But I don't think there's any question he is going to be all right when we play Iowa," Paterno said. "But right now we're just not going to use him a lot."
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