It may not be quite what we all expected, but the 4-0 Nittany Lions are winning in an impressive fashion that will serve them well down the line.
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“I run six plays, split veer. It’s like Novocain. Just give it time, it always works.”
– Denzel Washington as Coach Herman Boone, “Remember the Titans”
“There’s no greater feeling than to be able to move a man from Point A to Point B against his will.”
– NFL Hall of Fame offensive lineman Russ Grimm
“I feel like everybody would prefer to have the one- or two-play drive… But it is a different type of satisfaction when you’re out there, and you’re 10, 12, 15 plays in… because you feel like whatever you could do, they can’t stop it.”
– Penn State offensive guard Saleem Wormley
These are two of my favorite football quotes (even though the latter is from a Pitt alum – nobody’s perfect, after all – and the former is fiction) followed by a key member of the 2023 Nittany Lions summing up how it felt to smother the Iowa Hawkeyes with methodical brute force. Taken together, they form a kind of short story about the first quarter of Penn State’s season.
To the extent some fans worried or grumbled after the Lions took apart West Virginia on national television to open this year’s campaign, it can be traced to the ways in which a dominant 38-15 outing still fell short of expectations rooted in preseason hype. In the eight months that elapsed between Penn State’s Rose Bowl win over Utah and the end of Summer training camp, this year’s team had been built up so much in people’s minds that some folks seemed to be expecting to see the 1994 offense and 1986 defense paired together from the opening snap. When every pass rush didn’t result in a sack and every Nick Singleton carry a 60-yard scamper, there was a palpable sense of, “What gives?”
