Sometimes college football games — especially the season-openers — can feel as if they’re taking forever. In some cases, when you get a two-hour weather delay, that feeling is multiplied by a hundred.
In their much-anticipated debut under the crafty guidance of Andy Kotelnicki in Saturday’s game at West Virginia, and in the midst of a five-hour and 45-minute affair that checked both of the boxes above, Drew Allar and the Penn State offense needed only a handful of plays that lasted a handful of seconds to dispatch a fired-up group of Mountaineers and their, um, endearing fan base, and in the process feed Lion fans watching there and at home with some needed optimism.
On paper, the 2024 offense isn’t much different than the 2023 version; if anything, it’s worse. The offensive line is rebuilding, the group of reliable receiving options appears to be entirely composed of Tre Wallace, the dynamic tight end due of Theo Johnson and Tyler Warren is now just Warren, and Drew Allar and Beau Pribula are still doing the QB shuffle that seems to be as much of a threat to the offense’s own rhythm as it is to the defense.
