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Penn State’s annual Pro Day lacked a little star power this year. Not because the Nittany Lions didn’t produce any first-round talent; on the contrary, the first couple rounds of April’s NFL Draft will likely include several alumni, but because a pair of soon-to-be multi-millionaires — Abdul Carter and Tyler Warren — sat out the festivities as they were still recovering from injuries on the heels of a 16-game season.

How the Nittany Lions replace those stars in 2025, at both the positions they play and the sort of impact they had on the field, should be one of the keys to another promising season.

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At this level of football, where the talent is so evenly matched and the margins are so, so slim, the outcomes become less about the stellar plays and more about the mistakes.

Penn State made the biggest error on a night both teams committed their fair share, Drew Allar’s inexplicable interception with 33 seconds left that set up Notre Dame’s game-winning field goal, but the Nittany Lions made more than enough mistakes big and small before that to bring what had been a strong postseason run to a sobering end.

The Nittany Lions did a lot of good stuff in their final game of the season. They ran for 204 yards. They turned the Fighting Irish over twice and nearly came up with another on a Notre Dame fumble. They responded after the Irish had scored 17 unanswered points to take a 7-point fourth-quarter lead, then came up with a big stop in the final minute to give Allar and the offense a chance to win the game or at least send it into overtime.

But, upon closer inspection, it was a performance built more on sand than stone.

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Sometimes, the universe corrects itself.

For all the annual handwringing (most of it coming from the western part of the state) about whether Penn State and Pitt should play every season, the natural rival that the Nittany Lions have needed all this time has always been Notre Dame.

Two perennially strong programs from excellent schools, with rabid fan and alumni bases and distinctive, lucrative national brands. When they battled in the 80s and early 90s as independents, it was the marquee game on both teams’ schedules. When Penn State joined the Big Ten in 1993, it was somewhat understandable the Irish would rotate off the schedule … although, Notre Dame, positioned smack dab in the middle of Big Ten country, was already playing teams from that conference each season anyway.

But aside from a fan-servicey, mostly forgettable home-and-home split in the mid-2000s, this series has long been dormant. It took the expanded college playoff to renew it again. And if anyone—Pat Kraft, Pete Bevacqua, James Franklin, Marcus Freeman, hell, Tony Petitti—has any sense, this won’t be the only matchup between these teams we see for another decade plus.

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Maybe it’s just not going to happen this season. Maybe Penn State is never going to play a complete 60-minute game.

But maybe, just maybe, these Nittany Lions won’t have to do that to complete their primary goal.

Penn State turned in another uneven performance in Tuesday’s Fiesta Bowl, but the best parts were better … and the other parts weren’t as bad, allowing the Lions to cruise to a mostly comfortable 31-14 win over Boise State and advance to the national semifinals.

In the middle two quarters, the Lions’ offense was hamstrung by penalties and mystifying third-down playcalling, and a defense that was missing Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Abdul Carter allowed the Boise State passing attack to move the ball up and down the field.

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With all due respect to Abdul Carter and Jaylen Reed, the strength of Penn State’s sensational defense throughout the (exceedingly longer) 2024 season has been its balance, its depth, its collective skill and power. There are very few, if any, weak links in the chain, and the way the Nittany Lions are playing together on that side of the ball in the ultimate team sport has brought them here, where they are one of the last eight teams standing.

It should also serve them well against a singular offensive weapon the likes of which this program hasn’t seen in several years.

Boise State, which entertains Penn State on New Year’s Eve, is led by tailback Ashton Jeanty, who in most seasons would have entered this game as the reigning Heisman Trophy winner if not for the diverse skill set of another singular talent, Colorado’s Travis Hunter. The Jacksonville, Florida, native leads the nation in carries (344), rushing yards (2,497), and rushing touchdowns (29), and he has put up a mind-boggling 5,505 yards from scrimmage over 39 games over the last three seasons.

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The fans did their job. Considering the cold, and the approaching holiday, and the short-ish turnaround, and the optimists who decided to save their money for Glendale, and the students on break, the (cough) announced 106,013 who came to Beaver Stadium for Penn State’s first playoff game created the type of game-tilting atmosphere they have become known for, forcing several false starts on a heretofore potent SMU offense and helping to keep the Mustangs off-kilter for most of the afternoon.

Not to the extent that the Penn State defense did, though.

That unit dominated during the Nittany Lions’ 38-10 victory, and it is the chief reason why Penn State is not only moving on in the first 12-team tournament but why it is capable of being the last one standing.

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Beaver Stadium will once again be in the national spotlight this week, when the Nittany Lions host their first playoff game. Abdul Carter and Tyler Warren and Drew Allar and Nick Singleton will all attract that figurative spotlight as well, though probably not to the extent that the man who leads them will command it.

It’s yet another big game for James Franklin, who has not exactly risen to the challenge in, well, almost any of the big games he’s seen at Penn State.

It’s really the only major knock on an 11-year coaching stint that has otherwise been sparkling, even when graded on a sanctions curve. Franklin recruits at a high level. He gets his players to the NFL. He beats the teams he is supposed to beat (read that sentence again, and file it away for just a bit later), and often by several touchdowns. He understands and protects the value of the Penn State brand, and he has spent a decade behind the scenes beating down doors and slashing through red tape to bring his program up to par from a resource standpoint.

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This playoff stuff is crazy, man.

For the second time in two months, Penn State lost its game of the season … and yet it still has a chance to play for the national championship.

For the second time in two months, the Nittany Lions looked like they belonged on the biggest stage of the college game and had a few tantalizing moments where victory was allllllmost in their grasp. And for the second time in two months, they made enough mistakes to watch a signature win slip through their fingers.

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I understand the desire of fans in northern climates to see overhyped SEC teams play in cold-weather playoff games. I do. But the thing about really, really cold weather is that it usually makes for bad football.

After it took advantage of a gift from its (tongue nailed to the side of cheek) old pal Michigan on Saturday, Penn State, against not all but many odds, will get to avoid the cold for at least one more game.

The Nittany Lions had a little trouble with ball security in their 44-7 pasting of Maryland in frosty Beaver Stadium. Nick Singleton fumbled on the first play of the game. Kaytron Allen had a bobbled snap not long after. Even the sticky-handed Tyler Warren dropped a pass. And, well, that’s what happens in cold weather. The hands get numb. The football gets slick. The arms and legs move fractionally slower.

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It ended in, at least in the stat sheet, what appeared to be an obvious way — yet another pass completion from Drew Allar to Tyler Warren. A simple pitch and catch.

But nothing, not even that fourth-down toss, was simple in Penn State’s 26-25 win at Minnesota. With this town and this team, nothing ever is.

Saturday marked just the 17^th time in 32 Big Ten seasons that the Nittany Lions met the Golden Gophers on a football field, and though the Lions had won 10 of the previous 16 meetings, there had been a disproportionate number of concerning Gopher bites they had sustained from a team that hasn’t made much noise in the conference since the 1960s.

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