Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

It was all over his face.

James Franklin had just watched his super-hyped, seven-figure quarterback get helped off the field on the Nittany Lions’ gotta-have-it drive, then his backup come in and get squashed on another futile fourth-down call, then his defense fail to get a stop and provide his offense one more fleeting chance.

It was the third loss in a row in a season that was supposed to have been the one that finally got him and his program over the hump. Franklin made his customary walk to midfield and congratulated his counterpart, Northwestern’s David Braun, while the fans who he had always praised and encouraged serenaded him with a chorus of Homecoming boos and “Fire Franklin.”

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

The thing you have to remember about football is that it’s played — and coached — by human beings. And when those human beings reach a certain point, sometimes they’ve just had enough.

Maybe the UCLA Bruins were sick of being the laughingstock of the Power Four, let alone the Big Ten. Maybe they wanted to rally around  interim head coach Tim Skipper or its newly appointed offensive coordinator Jerry Neuheisel, who is the spitting image of his Tavern-loving father and called a pretty solid game on Saturday against a Penn State defense that hadn’t allowed much of anything to anyone through four games.

Whatever the case, the home team played like it had something to prove in the Rose Bowl, and it became the first 0-4 program to defeat a top-10 ranked opponent in 40 years.

But you don’t want to read about UCLA. You’re here for blood.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

The many sides of Drew Allar were on display in Beaver Stadium once again on a crazy Saturday White Out night.

For three quarters, there was Frustrating Drew, the one we’ve seen in too many big games to count, holding the ball too long, missing open receivers and, though certainly not the only issue in an offense that looked like it couldn’t advance the ball on a decent high school team, not doing much of anything to elevate it out of that rut, either.

Then, for the briefest of moments—four plays to be exact—we saw Franchise Drew, the guy whose performance matched his stratospheric potential. A perfect strike to his tight end, Luke Reynolds, for 9 yards. Then, after a long run by Kaytron Allen, another strike, to Trebor Pena, for 12 more. And finally a gorgeous rainbow over the entire Oregon defense to Devonte Ross for Penn State’s first touchdown. You remembered why this kid will likely hear his name called on the first day of next spring’s draft, and while most of you was celebrating, the rest of you got mad all over again wondering where this version has been for the last four years.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

Tre Wallace has averaged 86 yards through his first four games as a receiver for Ole Miss. He averaged 31 yards in 39 games as a Nittany Lion. Beau Pribula has thrown for 962 yards through his first four games at Missouri, which is 538 more yards than he logged through 24 games as a part-time Penn State quarterback.

Both of these former Lions are statistically out-pacing their current Penn State counterparts, which begs the question as the Lions prepare for one of their biggest regular-season games in years: Is there a fundamental flaw in Penn State’s offensive system?

To answer this question, which has been brought up more often than you would expect for a team ranked No. 2 and averaging a solid if not eye-popping 437 yards of offense per game, we must consider parts and wholes. The best football teams at any level of the game typically have better parts, on average, than their competitors, but the truly special teams can maximize the individual talents by getting them to blend into a synchronized, consistent whole.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

You might have had mixed feelings watching Kaytron Allen run into the end zone on Saturday.

It’s always fun to watch the Fatman in the open field, if you’re a Penn State fan, especially on a well-blocked play, and more fun if that run results in six points. However, you also might have wondered exactly what the hell Allen—and the rest of the offensive starters—were still doing in the game with just under 11 minutes to play in the fourth quarter against an FCS opponent.

The Nittany Lions’ third straight squandered cover win was another head-scratcher. They went right down the field on the game’s opening drive, covering 78 yards in 12 plays with a precision and a confidence that suggested they had purged many of the, uh, inconsistencies that we saw the first two weeks.

And then we saw about three more quarters of those inconsistencies.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

For a long time, golfers looked at putts per round as a key statistic. Then, a few years back, a more advanced metric emerged that was a more accurate gauge of putting success or failure—strokes gained. See, no two putts are created equal, so a golfer who hit 16 greens but had 30 putts had a much worse day on the greens than a golfer who had 32 putts but only hit nine greens and didn’t miss anything outside of five feet. Strokes gained measures how a golfer did compared to the rest of the field, not simply the number of putts.

The football equivalent of putts per round is third-down conversion percentage, which measures an offense’s ability to stay on the field but does not, by itself, account for the overall success of the offense. Would you rather be a unit that converts 7 of 10 third downs but only winds up with 20 points or an offense that converts 4 of 8 third downs but has five plays of 30 yards or more that all go for touchdowns? And, like putts, not all third downs are created equal. Are you failing to convert a bunch of 3rd and 2s or 3rd and 9s? How often are you even getting to third down in the first place?

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

If you’re one of college football’s big dogs, you can go with one of two options for the season opener: Battle another big dog or bat around a puppy for a few hours.

Shortly after Ohio State took down Texas in a certified big dog matchup on Saturday, Penn State hosted the Nevada Wolfpack in a game that might have been interesting had it been the real-life version of the mascots squaring off but held essentially no drama from a football standpoint.

Would a Week 1 Big Dog scalp have helped the Nittany Lions more than the 46-11 win over a team that will probably finish at or near the bottom of the Mountain West Conference? Of course, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t take just about full advantage of the opportunity presented to them.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

In the Summer of 1999, the airwaves were dominated by Ricky Martin, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez. The top movie at the box office was The Phantom Menace. A gallon of gas cost $1.17.

And Penn State had itself a hell of a football team.

The Nittany Lions had some intriguing talent on offense, with big-play wideout Chafie Fields, running backs Omar Easy and Eric McCoo, and a sometimes perplexing but usually productive QB tandem in Kevin Thompson and Rashard Casey. And the defense was absolutely loaded. Defensive end Courtney Brown and linebacker LaVar Arrington, who would go 1-2 in the NFL Draft the following spring, were terrors for opposing offensive lines and ball carriers but also benefited from playing alongside future pros Brandon Short, David Macklin, Bhawoh Jue, Bryan Scott and Justin Kurpeikis. They entered the season as the No. 3 team in the Associated Press rankings and quickly rose to No. 2 by utterly embarrassing No. 4 Arizona 41-7 in Beaver Stadium in the season opener.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

Most of the eyes were focused on the new wide receivers, with a few more thoughts focused on the receiver that just committed and will arrive this summer. Most of the key starters were resting after nursing minor injuries during the spring. Most of the new defensive coordinator’s playbook, which the Nittany Lions have been feverishly trying to learn this spring, was not on display, just in case there were Michigan sentries hiding somewhere in the modest crowd of 15,000 54,000 people.

Welcome to Blue White, 2025 style, a day when Penn State clung to one of the longstanding traditions of its past while the influences of the rapidly arriving future tugged at it from all sides.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

As we approach what might just be the curtain call for the Blue-White Game, we need to acknowledge the sheer value it has provided to the Penn State football team in terms of continuing preparations for the upcoming season.

Lol jk it’s a glorified practice.

However, over the years, that glorified practice, which has taken many shapes and forms as the program has undergone leadership changes and college football has, um, changed a bit itself, has had intangible but significant value for the program’s many fans.

Continue reading