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“I have lived seven lifetimes tonight.” – Me
Though my fingers will clack clack away for a dozen or so paragraphs, I don’t really have words for what happened on the first day of September in the year 2022 A.D. (or C.E. or whatever we’re doing these days). I do know this, though: all Penn State fans aged exponentially this week, lower our life expectancy at least ten years. Talk about a rollercoaster. We went from Sean Clifford starting poorly, to being really good, to leaving for Drew Allar, to coming back and being awful, to leading one of the most impressive drives this side of Iowa City in 2017. We watched a Purdue receiver who had 500 yards in 3 seasons at Buffalo and Iowa roast the “vaunted” Penn State secondary for 153 yards and a touchdown. The Penn State defense looked suspect on some drives but came up huge in the last two Purdue possessions to give the Nittany Lions a chance and lock up the win, respectively. The run game had 77 yards in the first half, which was on pace for “pretty good,” only to finish with 98. We’ll do some fun stat-y stuff below, but there is absolutely zero that can be taken away from this game in terms of trends. This game was like the AMC stock of college football.
Ever procrastinate? Sure you have. You’ve put stuff off that probably should have been done today, and sometimes, you get a lucky break along the way—the boss decides he doesn’t need that presentation from you for another week, or your wife decides she wants to get a different tile for that bathroom renovation you’ve been putting off. So you feel justified in procrastinating. But you’re really not.
For the first, oh, 56 minutes of Penn State’s opener at Purdue, a disaster scenario was shaping up for the Nittany Lions. Sean Clifford was playing like, well, Sean Clifford, lifting the Nittany Lions to a healthy lead early then helping the Boilers get right back in it with a flurry of wildly inaccurate passing in the second half. The disaster part is that, when Clifford missed a series while getting an IV, Drew Allar came in the game and, in just four passes, stole the hearts of every Penn State fan and gave us an oh-so-brief but oh-so-tantalizing glimpse of what could be. Those four passes resulted in two completions, a drop, and a wobbly (but fast-moving) duck that had no chance, but damn it, the kid looked the part. Never mind the accuracy and the velocity, but he showed a true pocket presence—eyes downfield, feet moving but never retreating—that a certain other quarterback has shown for only slivers of a six-year career.
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• Gus Johnson: “That’s one of the best drives, Joel Klatt, that I’ve ever seen!” Gus…buddy…look…you’re excited; I’m excited; we’re all excited, OK? But, please, a little perspective. You do realize there’s a drive called THE DRIVE, right? Right?
• Good lord, where to start? Scrolling back and re-reading our in-game Twitter feed (before the phone died…thanks Jobs), we were pretty damn grouchy, so why don’t we flip the script and shovel down our ice cream before we hold our nose and force-swallow that pile of lima beans so Mom lets us leave the table and go to bed.