Introduction

Penn State has 2 wins in 2 weeks; that’s a streak – and a positive one at that. Not only is it two games without pain, but Penn State’s 23 – 7 win against Rutgers was the 900th win in program history. PSU joins Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Yale, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Nebraska as the only teams to eclipse the 900 mark. Congratulations to every player, coach, and staff member who’s contributed to even one of those 900 wins – it’s further proof (for those who may have forgotten) that Penn State really is in the upper echelon of college football.

Today, we will focus on this week’s game, season and what’s going well, what still needs improvement, and take a brief look back at the 134 seasons that have cumulated in 900 wins.

Basic Statistics Summary – Rutgers

Another week, another green fill for the Lions in the stat column that matters most – points. Looking beyond the score, PSU thoroughly dominated every major facet of the game. Domination is a relative term, though. Inherently it assumes something about the performance of the faction that is being dominated. And in this case, that opposing faction – i.e. Rutgers Football – isn’t very good. So while Penn State outgained Rutgers by nearly 2-to-1, outrushed them by 3-to-1, and controlled the ball for 13 more minutes, it feels as though Penn State still has a long way to go to if it intends to contend for conference and/or national titles in the near future. 

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Introduction

This feels different. Today we don’t write with a feeling of dread but rather mild contentment. I’m still not sure that the Penn State football team is “good” but maybe, at least, they’re recovering from the disaster that was the first five weeks of the season and beginning to figure things out.  

Basic Statistics – Summary

Finally, we can turn the first row green for the Lions who won the most important category of any game – the score. Not only that, but they pretty much dominated the rest of the contest too, racking up 131 more yards, controlling the ball for more than 36 minutes, and not turning the ball over (not even once!). Even the one category that the Wolverines won – rush yards per attempt – is misleading because Penn State still had 80 more total rushing yards.

Look, it wasn’t pretty and there’s still A LOT to be desired, especially in the passing game, but this was an objectively better performance than what we all witnessed in the first five weeks. There was a feeling of competence and decisiveness to the offense. There seemed to be variety in the playcalling. The defense, while still not being able to contain an outside running game, appeared to generally be more aggressive than in weeks gone-by. I want to believe that this is something a team can build upon. There’s an adage in the market: “Stocks take the staircase up and the elevator down, If you consider the 2019 Cotton Bowl as peak Penn State football, the program took a broken, freefalling elevator down through the first five games of 2020. Maybe this is the first stair-step back up towards that peak we used to know, and perhaps took for granted.

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Introduction

By now, I hope you know what we try to do here. We look at the stats of the latest Penn State football game loss from a statistical and contextual analysis and compare it to years gone-by. And now, with each passing week, the historic nature of this team is starting to add up for all the wrong reasons. 

Basic Statistics – Summary

In the basic stat table, we highlight the team that won each category and, week over week, Penn State has had something good to hang their hats on despite always failing in the most important row – the score. Whether it was winning the yardage battle or controlling the ball, there was something positive. Against Iowa, there was nothing that gives hope. Yes, Penn State had more passing yards than the Hawkeyes (280 to 186) and completed a slightly higher percentage of passes but this didn’t matter. After scoring on their 2nd possession to take their first lead since Indiana (which was game 1 in case you forgot) Iowa thoroughly dismantled the Lions and this game wasn’t close. Even after Clifford subbed in for an ineffective Will Levis and threw two touchdowns in two plays to cut the lead to 31–21 the game was never really in doubt. Any existing doubt about this week’s outcome was erased when Penn State chose to punt down by 13 with just over 3 minutes remaining. What also may have been erased with that punt was any faith that this team might have the skill, organization, will, and heart to gain anything positive from the 2020 season.

This week, rather than go through the detailed graphs, analytics, and statistical breakdowns, we’re going to focus on historic context. In honor of the first Penn State team to start 0-5 in the 134-year history of the program, let’s see how far we need to go back to find other points of futility in the storied history of this once gloried program. Here are the Top 10 shocking, depressing, and embarrassing stats of your (not my – I’m a Coastal Carolina fan now) 2020 Penn State Nittany Lions.

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Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it. – Albert Camus

Introduction

Welcome back to The ABC’s of Penn State Football which is our weekly look at analytics, basic stats, and historic context of our favorite college football team. Maybe, just maybe, the worst of the season is behind us and there are glimmers of hope. Enjoy!

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That was a disaster and the chaos is likely to continue.

Introduction

Welcome to our new weekly feature on fortheblogy.com where we’ll look at a mixture of common and advanced stats for the team’s most recent “performance” in the context of the entire James Franklin tenure and try, as frightening as it might be, to predict where this team is headed. There are other writers on the site who will continue breaking down the schematic elements of the team and I will focus on results through a mix of math and cool (hopefully) data visualizations – this is the ABC’s of Penn State Football. Enjoy!

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