So, uh, 1-0?
Penn State put together all the ingredients for a feel-good Saturday after an occasionally sloppy but largely impressive opening win at West Virginia: a beautiful, sunny September afternoon, a MAC opponent they should handle without much difficulty, and a large home crowd full of fans who were ready to be optimistic about this team’s long-term chances, and perhaps drink a $12 beer or three.
Instead, the Nittany Lions learned some hard truths about themselves, the first and most significant being that the perceived easier path to the expanded playoff won’t matter much if they don’t figure some things out along that path the next few weeks, and the second being, for the first time in a while, that most of those things concerned the defense.
