Penn State’s afternoon started like an old man trying to get the blood circulating after waking up—slowly, deliberately, with a few creaks and groans along the way.

It ended ignominiously, with a touchdown surrendered in the final minute on a semi-busted coverage by a freshman safety.

And yet, once again, in the middle, the Nittany Lions did the things they needed to do against an opponent they needed to beat, headlocking a sloppy UCLA squad for a 27-11 win and staying on track for the games that will determine their season.

And although another slow start and that rare late score allowed by the defense will probably be enough on their own to keep some grumbling, isn’t it about time we start celebrating these Nittany Lions for what they are rather than gripe about what they are not?

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Thirty years ago, one of the greatest offenses in college football completed a legendary comeback as Penn State defeated Illinois.

Three years ago, one of the most forgettable offenses in Nittany Lion history showed its futility again … and again … and again, as Penn State lost to Illinois in nine overtimes, the longest game in college football history.

A group that bore much more resemblance to the 1994 Penn State team that was honored Saturday than the 2021 version needed another fourth-quarter score to put away another scrappy Illinois team, though this one got in its own way more than the Fighting Illini did.

The No. 9 Nittany Lions leaned on their two thoroughbred running backs, a bounce-back defense, and two savvy coordinators who directed those respective units in an uncomfortably comfortable 21-7 win over 19^th-ranked Illinois.

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Dispatches from Beaver Stadium following the Kent State game, aka the Liam Clifford Breakout Party …

First off all, it should be noted once again that the Nittany Lions are both at fault and not at fault for the level of opponent. College football schedules, for reasons known only to Mark Emmert and the CIA, are put together several years in advance. And they do get a pass for the pandemic wreaking particular havoc on this particular opponent scheduling. But while Penn State couldn’t have known the Golden Flashes would be this bad in 2024, they had to figure they weren’t going to be great. But hey, Kent State gets its paycheck, Penn State gets a dub heading into the Big Ten season, and on we go.

I don’t think the Nittany Lions played particularly well, nor were they particularly bad. They arguably could have beaten this Kent State team — even before it lost its top two quarterbacks to injuries — by 30 or 40 points with a random mix of first- and second-stringers playing the entire game. At least initially, they didn’t look particularly crisp on offense, and the defense continued its early season trend of silly penalties, including a couple more neutral zone infractions.

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Ah, yes, the week 3 bye. A chance to reflect on all we’ve learned about Penn State through the first two games, which is to say: Not much. Are the Nittany Lions the balanced bullies we saw in Morgantown or the flawed playoff pretenders that scratched out a one-possession win over a middling Bowling Green team at home? Or, perhaps, something completely different than either of those two versions?

We won’t know for a few more weeks. But there were a few things that hinted at what the Lions’ immediate future might look like, and a few that are unlikely to stay that way, good or bad, for the remainder of the year.

3 THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER

Third-down struggles: Yes, Penn State’s third-down conversion rate (35%, 94th in FBS) is mildly disturbing when you consider it hasn’t exactly faced world-beating defenses, and if that trend continues, it will mean fewer plays for the offense to be on the field and more plays for a suddenly suspect defense to have to be on the field. However, this is a small sample size, and third-down conversion rate, while not something you want to disregard entirely, is not a be-all, end-all statistic. Why? If you can pick up first downs, or even big, chunky, sexy touchdowns, on first or second down, there’s no need to convert on third. The Nittany Lions have, thanks to their crafty coordinator and a revitalized Drew Allar, more explosive punch than we’ve seen recently (more on this in a bit), and have shown the ability to score points despite the third-down misfires. Expect this stat to improve a bit as the season progresses but also for the offense to deliver the chunk plays that will mitigate it even if it doesn’t.

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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.

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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.

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Writing a Penn State football column based on a (series of) Taylor Swift song(s) is akin to bringing an opera fan to a monster truck rally, but it’s August, and the season can’t start soon enough. The most popular pop artist in the world is currently in the midst of her Eras Tour, a tribute to the various evolutions of her music.

With Penn State about to kick off a season with its sixth offensive coordinator in the last 10 years, it’s worth looking back at the differences between the Nittany Lions’ offensive eras and what clues they might provide on how 2024 might go. With apologies to Taylor Swift Penn State fans no one, here goes nothing.

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Sisyphus was a king in ancient Greece who ruled with an iron fist. The gods, angry at him for killing visitors to his land, punished him by forcing him to push a boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down each time it approached the summit, for eternity.

James Franklin has now ruled the kingdom of Penn State football for more than a decade, and each time the Nittany Lions appear as though they’re about to reach the summit of college football’s elite, they backslide. The 52-year-old coach has proven quite adept at pushing the proverbial boulder most of the way up the hill, as evidenced by both the four top-10 finishes in the past eight years and the team’s current preseason ranking of No. 8. That he hasn’t gotten it the whole way up, and down the other side, is an increasing sore spot for his kingdom, and each year that passes causes a few more observers to wonder how close to Sisyphus’ plight Franklin truly is.

The coming 2024 season, however, threatens to break the cycle, one way or the other. There is a chance, a not-that-crazy chance, that a few things that haven’t clicked for Penn State during the last few years will click, and a spot in the expanded playoff is there for the taking. The Nittany Lions have one of the nation’s most talented running back rooms, a quarterback who at least has the potential to be more dynamic than he showed in a productive but frustrating first year as a starter, and an offensive coordinator who has a proven proclivity for getting dudes into open spaces with the football. The defense is once again deep and athletic, dotted with potential All-Americans and led by a savvy veteran defensive coordinator who has, like that aforementioned offensive coordinator, done some impressive stuff with a lot less talent than he’ll have at his disposal this fall.

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Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2024 Spring Football Coverage is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

Saturday’s Blue-White Game was a terrific opportunity for Penn State fans watching from the stands and on television to learn about the schemes of new coordinators Andy Kotelnicki and Tom Allen, which will likely play a key role in the team’s level of success this autumn.

Of course, James Franklin had no intention of giving future opponents any sort of hint about those schemes, so this game, like so many spring scrimmages before it, was more of an organized workout than any sort of competition, especially considering a bulk of likely starters were out nursing injuries and, you know, you’re not allowed to touch the quarterbacks.

But even if Saturday wasn’t helpful from an Xs and Os standpoint, it was useful to see which players looked like they belonged. And the Nittany Lions had more than a few of them on both sides of the ball.

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The most impressive thing about Drew Allar in 2023 might have been the way the then-sophomore quarterback owned up for his and his team’s few failures in the post-game media room. Often emotional but always accountable, Allar showed a maturity beyond his years and earned respect from both grumpy sportswriters and, far more importantly, his teammates.

The next step in Allar’s ongoing development is having to do that less often this fall.

Look, I said a few weeks ago, and still believe, that Andy Kotelnicki is the guy who will have the largest influence on the type of season the Nittany Lions have, but close behind is the team’s QB1. At least some of the maturity Allar displayed when talking to reporters is going to have to translate to how he handles rotating safeties and blitzing linebackers and how he handles both deep shots and short throws if Penn State is going to maximize its potential.

Wow, yes, the starting quarterback playing well is a key to the season. Very astute analysis there.

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