Week One was a nail-biter. Week Two was a nail-filer.

Penn State wasted little time making a very good MAC team look like a very weak MAC team Saturday in front of the largest home-opener crowd in 13 years, finding the offensive firepower to match another dominant defensive performance in a 44-13 waxing of Ball State. The Nittany Lions out-gained the Cardinals 493-295, won the turnover battle 2-0 and didn’t allow a touchdown until the defensive starters had already called it a day midway through the fourth quarter.

For the second straight week, Sean Clifford had a clean game, completing a high percentage of his passes, none to the other team, and accounted for a pair of touchdowns. The run game, stymied last week by a savage Wisconsin front seven, put 43 yards on the stat sheet on the game’s opening drive and nearly 200 more over the next 55 minutes. Ten receivers caught at least one pass and four of them had at least one grab of 20-plus yards.

It was, in almost every way, the sort of afternoon coaches and fans dream about — pristine September weather, a fired-up and live-football-starved crowd of over 105,000, and a comfortable win that allowed the starters to build confidence and backups to get some well-deserved game reps. And it wasn’t against an FCS opponent, either; Ball State brought 18 starters back from a team that had gone 7-1 last year, including its first bowl victory, and had picked up a win in its first game last week as well.

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• Because Tulsa and Oklahoma State prolonged their in-state pillow fight past 3:30 p.m. with a string needless incomplete passes, FS1 joined the Penn State-Ball State broadcast seconds before kickoff, so those of us at home missed out on the pre-game Beaver Stadium ambiance, which sucked. But, for an out-of-conference, come-get-clobbered-for-a-fat-check schedule filler, the joint sounded louder than usual, didn’t it?

• Predictably, the unit Penn State fans chomped fingernails fretting over in the preseason – the Nittany Lions unproven defensive line – can’t be blocked, and the two offensive groups that were sure to be transcendent – the 5-deep RB corps and “the most talented tight end room in program history” – belong on the side of a milk carton.

• About those running backs…where’s the lightning to Noah Cain’s thunder? Yes, it was refreshing to finally see Keyvone Lee quit switching directions aimlessly like a vibrating electric football player with a faulty green base and rip off a handful of solid north-south runs after halftime. But spelling Cain with Lee, or Lee with Cain, feels like tossing away the Dasani and picking up an Aquafina. They’re redundant. What’s the deal with John Lovett? Where’s Caziah Holmes?

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