After some patience on draft night, Trevor Penning puts UNI, rural Iowa ‘on the map’

As Trevor Penning watched Thursday night’s first round of the NFL Draft in his hometown of Clear Lake, surrounded by many friends and family in a packed restaurant right on Highway 18, the offensive tackle kept hearing fellow offensive linemen get picked.

First it was North Carolina State’s Ikem Ekwonu with the sixth pick.

Then Evan Neal with the seventh pick, Charles Cross with the ninth pick and even guards Kenyon Green and Zion Johnson with the 15th and 17th picks, respectively.

Then the New Orleans Saints finally gave the former UNI offensive tackle a call ahead of making the 19th pick.

“My heart was racing,” Penning told reporters Thursday. “I thought my heart was going to explode.”

Along with obviously kick-starting Penning’s NFL career, the mid-first-round pick put a spotlight on UNI and the Clear Lake area.

Penning, who played Class A high school football at Mason City Newman, said he hopes his first-round selection sets an example for kids in “small-town Iowa.”

“Hopefully I put them on the map and show what hard work does really,” Penning said.

Twenty-one Iowa-born players were on NFL rosters in 2021, according to Pro Football Reference, but most of them were within an hour of one of Iowa’s six largest cities. None of them were from rural, north-central Iowa.

The Saints’ decision to take Penning marked the highest pick of a UNI player ever by a wide margin.

The previous highest pick in UNI history depends on how one measures it. Based on overall pick, it was James Jones’ 1991 third-round selection with the 57th overall pick. Based on the round, it was center Brad Meester’s second-round selection in 2000, when he was picked 60th overall.

It also was the fourth time UNI had the highest-picked player from the four Division I football programs in the state — Iowa, Iowa State, UNI and Drake — according to Pro Football Reference data.

The only other occurrence from the last two decades was in 2016, when Deiondre’ Hall was a fourth-round pick and Iowa didn’t have anyone taken until Austin Blythe in the seventh round.

Roughly 1,000 miles south of The Other Place restaurant in 7,687-person Clear Lake, New Orleans believes they added an offensive tackle who “plays our type of football.”

“This guy is big,” Saints head coach Dennis Allen said. “This guy is tough. This guy is nasty. … Obviously we were ecstatic that he was sitting there when we got ready to pick at 19.”

Penning is ready to get started, too.

“Shoot, let’s go to New Orleans,” Penning said.

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