Week One was a nail-biter. Week Two was a nail-filer.

Penn State wasted little time making a very good MAC team look like a very weak MAC team Saturday in front of the largest home-opener crowd in 13 years, finding the offensive firepower to match another dominant defensive performance in a 44-13 waxing of Ball State. The Nittany Lions out-gained the Cardinals 493-295, won the turnover battle 2-0 and didn’t allow a touchdown until the defensive starters had already called it a day midway through the fourth quarter.

For the second straight week, Sean Clifford had a clean game, completing a high percentage of his passes, none to the other team, and accounted for a pair of touchdowns. The run game, stymied last week by a savage Wisconsin front seven, put 43 yards on the stat sheet on the game’s opening drive and nearly 200 more over the next 55 minutes. Ten receivers caught at least one pass and four of them had at least one grab of 20-plus yards.

It was, in almost every way, the sort of afternoon coaches and fans dream about — pristine September weather, a fired-up and live-football-starved crowd of over 105,000, and a comfortable win that allowed the starters to build confidence and backups to get some well-deserved game reps. And it wasn’t against an FCS opponent, either; Ball State brought 18 starters back from a team that had gone 7-1 last year, including its first bowl victory, and had picked up a win in its first game last week as well.

Continue reading

The offenses made it look like the first game of the season. Penn State’s offense had 2 (!!) rushing yards and 43 total yards at halftime, and minus-2 (!!) rushing yards through the first three quarters. Wisconsin’s offense turned the ball over three times in Penn State territory. The Nittany Lions missed a 23-yard field goal and an extra point; the Badgers had a 25-yard field-goal try blocked. The teams combined for 13 punts and 11 three-and-outs.

All of those numbers, and the utter lack of offensive rhythm by either preseason top-20 squad, however, also help tell another, perhaps more important story: The defenses did not look like they were playing in the first game of the season. And, in a mild upset, Penn State’s was the defense that carried the day in Saturday’s 16-10 win in Camp Randall.

Wisconsin returned eight starters from a defense that led the conference in yardage allowed and was third in points allowed (albeit in seven games) and, despite inside linebacker Leo Chenal being a late scratch after testing positive for COVID-19, the Badgers lived up to that standard, putting constant pressure on Sean Clifford and his offensive line with a mix of stunts and pressure from various angles and forcing Penn State’s running backs to work hard just to get back to the line of scrimmage.

Continue reading

Soon, we will find out exactly what sort of Penn State team we have on our hands. We won’t have to guess or argue about whether the defensive line has enough depth or who will step up as the third wide receiver – we’ll know. College football is back, and by this time next week, the Nittany Lions will be 1-0 or 0-1 and we’ll have five times more questions but we’ll also have 10 times more answers, with more to follow each week as summer becomes fall.

At the same time, what has been pretty much the question of the offseason, if not the last three years, will likely remain, and that is:

Can Sean Clifford get it done?

Continue reading

It’s often said – usually by football people – that football is the ultimate team sport, that the success or failure of any given play is determined not by performance of the two or three players who actually touched the pigskin but by the performances of all 11 players working in unison, and how well they did against the 11 players working in unison to stop them.

So while the importance of the quarterback position has never been more prominent at all levels of the game, and while college teams typically need at least a few explosive plays from the quote-unquote skill guys each week, the teams who enjoy the most consistent success at the highest levels are the teams who get the most consistently productive performances from the most anonymous players on the field – the offensive and defensive linemen.

As far as Penn State is concerned as the 2021 season rapidly approaches, all eyes are on and all opinions are about No. 14. And yes, Sean Clifford must be more consistent and take better care of the football if the Nittany Lions are to have any kind of season to write home about. But Clifford has plenty of weapons to throw to and just as many behind him to carry the rock, plus a new offensive coordinator and system that promises to take some pressure off him and put it on the opposing defense.

Continue reading

One of the big storylines you’ll hear from TV talking heads or national media concerning Penn State in the coming weeks will be how the Nittany Lions will look to “bounce back” from a 4-5 season or are determined to “take the bad taste out of their mouths” after a 4-5 season, or … insert your well-worn cliché of choice here after a 4-5 season.

Though there is some truth to that – Penn State’s players and coaches are prideful guys, and much of the short-but-sour 2020 season was embarrassing, even if there weren’t many fans around to see it live – you have to wonder how much bouncing back this team will actually have to do this season.

Which is to say, Penn State had a bad record last season, but it wasn’t really a bad team. More like a decent-to-good team that just could not get out of its own way.

Continue reading

August begins the slow turning of the page from preseason to season, replete with workouts and game plans and live-ball drills and media obligations. It’s the time to put in work without knowing if it’ll pay off in November or even early January.

It’s also a time for unbridled optimism; every team is undefeated, and the fears of coaches and cynical fans have yet to be realized. Everyone sees what could be and is reminded of how much they missed this brutal yet wonderful game.

As James Franklin and Penn State look to put a crazy year behind them, the optimism of August is ripe, even if it doesn’t compare to the optimism the Nittany Lions generated in July.

Last month, Penn State locked down a dozen commitments in a Class of 2022 that is now ranked the best in the nation by the major recruiting sites (and added in a top-40 commitment in the Class of 2023 to boot). That’s a hell of a month by any recruiting standard but almost impossible to believe when you consider that this team WENT 4-5 LAST FALL.

Continue reading

Friday night football in Beaver Stadium is not exactly normal.

But it helped Penn State take another important step back toward normalcy.

The coronavirus pandemic has not yet gone away, and it might very well still be around when the Nittany Lions open the season this September. They were nonetheless able to get a full slate of practices in this spring, culminating in Friday’s session open to media members, recruits, senior students, and (thanks to a spur-of-the-moment PR move that was either insane or genius) a few fans who spotted the ads for free tickets the team put out on Thursday night.

The fans who first came and were first served lucked out with the weather, a gorgeous sunset capping off a cool-but-not-cold April evening, and were treated to, by all accounts … well, another spring practice. Some highlight-reel plays, some head-scratchers, watered-down schemes, etc. Getting to watch football practice at a big-time program on occasion, as any reporter will tell you, is a treat; watching it on a regular basis is tedium.

Continue reading

First rule of the Blue-White Game: Don’t draw any firm conclusions.

This Kalen King dude, though, isn’t leaving us with much choice.

The buzz around Penn State’s impressive freshman cornerback, which has been growing throughout the spring, approached Apache helicopter levels on Saturday during the Nittany Lions’ annual spring scrimmage/exhibition for freshmen students and media afternoon practice. King turned in a pick six and another interception – of presumptive starter Sean Clifford – in the end zone and made his presence felt as a blitzer as well.

Although it’s tempting and likely prudent to say that any performance in any spring game isn’t worth the paper this blog column isn’t printed on, Saturday was just another sign that King could soon be a force to be reckoned with on a Penn State defense that hasn’t had a lot of those forces recently.

Continue reading

Penn State will hold its final spring football practice in a week. Most years, it’s called the Blue-White Game, and it’s attended by as many as 70,000 fans, who probably aren’t dying to see how the third-string left tackle looks or who will be the next Aric Heffelfinger as much as they are just looking to scratch a football itch as they wait for September.

This year, the details are foggier, but we know that Penn State freshmen will be allowed inside the stadium to watch this practice or game or scrimmage or whatever it’s going to be. For the rest of us, it’s an opportune time to consider how the Nittany Lions might tweak the format in future, pandemic-free years of what is usually, after the initial excitement of seeing dudes in helmets and pads wears off, a fairly dull afternoon.

Some humble suggestions, with reasons why they would and wouldn’t work:

 The 7 on 7

Quarterbacks slangin’ the tater. Receivers and corners squaring off in a running chess match. This format, which typically substitutes flags for live tackling, grates on traditionalists but there’s no denying the fast-paced appeal to both casual and knowledgeable fans.

Continue reading

The trouble with consistently recruiting and developing pro talent is that you’re consistently having to replace it.

In a few weeks, Penn State will almost assuredly continue a three-year streak of having at least one defensive end selected in the NFL Draft. Jayson Oweh, last seen making jaws drop at Pro Day, is a possible first-round pick and will almost assuredly go in one of the first two rounds, and if Shaka Toney is also taken, which seems quite likely, it will mark four edge rushers drafted from one program in three years, which puts Penn State on par with anyone in the country.

Though that’s great for Oweh, Toney, Yetur Gross-Matos and Shareef Miller, and also continues a strong tradition for the Nittany Lions at the position that started under the tutelage of Larry Johnson and continued through Sean Spencer and now John Scott Jr., it leaves the current Penn State team in a potential bind at one of the most important positions in the college game.

There are currently 12 players listed as defensive tackles on Penn State’s roster, including veterans P.J. Mustipher and Fred Hansard, promising redshirt freshman Hakeem Beamon and Duke transfer Derrick Tangelo. By contrast, there are only nine defensive ends, including two walk-ons and only one scholarship player, Nick Tarburton, who has been with the program for more than two seasons.

Continue reading