Quinn leads No. 4 Irish to rout over Penn State

Notre Dame jumped out to 20-0 lead en route to a 41-17 victory.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) -- Brady Quinn and the Notre Dame offense were as good as advertised in Week 2.
After an unimpressive opening game, Quinn, Jeff Samardzija and Co. returned to their fantastic form of last season in a 41-17 victory over No. 19 Penn State on Saturday.
Quinn, the Heisman hyped quarterback, was 12-of-16 passing for 150 yards and two touchdowns in the second quarter alone as fourth-ranked Notre Dame opened a 20-0 lead. The defense and special teams chipped in, too, breaking the game open in the third quarter by scoring one touchdown and setting up another as the Fighting Irish cruised. The game was essentially over at halftime.
"What I liked was the first half was meticulous," Irish coach Charlie Weis said. "We had it about 19 minutes out of the 30 minutes. That's not just offense. That's offense and defense."
Can't win big on road
Coach Joe Paterno's Nittany Lions (1-1) haven't beaten a ranked team on the road since a 34-31 win at No. 19 Wisconsin on Oct. 5, 2002. It was a disappointing performance for the Nittany Lions, who were eager to show they're ready to be national contenders again after winning the Big Ten last year.
"I think they outplayed us," Paterno said. "We made too many mistakes. We were sloppy."
Quinn and the Irish looked much sharper than they did a week earlier in a 14-10 victory at Georgia Tech, when they played so inconsistently that even Weis dropped the Irish a few spots on his ballot in the coaches' poll.
Asked how it felt to beat a coach like Paterno, Weis said: "I was happy to beat Penn State. ... We were happy to beat a team as good as Penn State the way we did today."
Three TD passes
Quinn threw touchdown passes to Samardzija, Rhema McKnight and Darius Walker.
"I thought Brady Quinn was a heck of a football player coming in and he didn't do anything to change my mind," Paterno said.
Through two games Quinn has 533 yards passing -- well ahead of last year's pace of 367 yards.
Weis said the only bad pass he thought Quinn threw was when he overthrew John Carlson in the end zone early in the second half and the Irish had to settle for a field goal.
Line play made difference
Quinn said the big difference was the play off the offensive line, which wasn't very good against Georgia Tech.
"Everything that happened today I think should be credited to them, not us," Quinn said.
Penn State linebacker Paul Posluszny said the Irish caught the Nittany Lions off guard.
"We expected them to keep going deep, but they just cleaned us all out and went underneath," he said.
Safety Tom Zbikowski returned a fumble for a 25-yard touchdown for Notre Dame and Travis Thomas -- the running back turned starting linebacker -- set up his own 1-yard TD run with a 43-yard run on a fake punt.
Anthony Morelli, making his second career start for the Lions, found playing on the road a little more difficult than playing Akron at home. He was 21 of 33 passing with one interception and a fumble. He threw a 2-yard TD pass to Deon Butler with 5:51 left in the game.
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