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• Thanks to the 4^th Estate assigned to cover all the ins and outs/nooks and crannies/snaps crackles and pops of Penn State Football, we learned this week that the Gen Z Nittany Lions are huge fans of cranking the loud speakers up to 11 and blasting Phil Collins at practice. Who knew? Since that’s the case, might we suggest skipping the haunting tones of In The Air Tonight or sick synth beats of Sussudio and instead just play Land of Confusion on a continuous loop this week and next? Because no song title hits the nail on the head better when it comes to describing the current state of the Penn State offense.

• Yes, the Nittany Lions pushed their FBS-best streak of 30+ point games to 12 today. But it wasn’t easy. And it definitely wasn’t pretty. EVERYTHING THE OFFENSE DOES JUST SEEMS HARD. I don’t know how else to explain it. Zero flow. Zero rhythm. Zero consistency. Zero identity. As we wrote in our ‘Dial M For Methodical’ blog post earlier this week, “…like a disgruntled significant other who sat you down for one of those ‘We Need To Talk’ talks, it’s not just ONE thing. It’s a lot of things.’”

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• Taking a cue from our spirit animal, Thumper The Rabbit: The Nittany Lions offense excelled in putting together an expansive library full of teachable/correctable film today. Is that nice enough? Good job, good effort.

• Penn State Twitter/X needs to chill out. Far be it from us to stand on a digital soapbox and tell you how to live your life, but…IDK, perhaps consider taking a breath and letting the game age more than 8 real-time minutes before your twitchy fingers extrapolate Chicken Little absolute truths from a half-dozen plays? On the opening drive, Penn State’s defense surrendered 46 yards, 3 first downs, and 0 points. That’s it. That’s all. And yet, in response to that decent initial effort, the online venom flowed like Niagara. 5 turnovers, 3 sacks, and 7 TFL later, well, those 12:19 EST tweets/X’s aged worse than a two-term U.S. president.

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• Hey! HEY! Yeah YOU: conference commissioners, TV execs, athletic directors, and university presidents! If your unquenchable longing to dive head-first in Scrooge McDuck swimmable gold-coin vaults bastardizes everything we used to love about college football, can you at least to put rest these lamb-to-the-slaughter FCS schedule-filling Saturdays while you’re hard at work ruining the sport? Please! We’re begging you! Watching this curb-stomping was a chore, at best. Paying $5.99 for the privilege to do so made me sit and reflect on where my life went so wrong. My dream is that the TV networks/streaming services demand for a better on-field product pressures the Big Ten into upping the conference schedule to 12 games (6 home, 6 away) with each team adding an out-of-conference FBS Week 0 home opponent (UMass, Kent State, Georgia, Louisiana-Monroe, Temple, IDC…just as long as they’re FBS) to ensure schools seven games worth of ticket/chicken basket revenue.

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While the Nittany Lions cleared up several cloudy areas (ahem, QB play) in the season opener, presumed no-brainer positions of strength (OL, RB) raised a few eyebrows…and not in a good way.

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BOX SCORE               FTB CHARTING

Huzzah! The permed-hair prince who was promised!

On the Beaver Stadium scoreboard, Drew Allar is announced as the starting QB vs. West Virginia … 26 minutes before kickoff pic.twitter.com/hA0fr1RM2S

— Mike Poorman (@PSUPoorman) September 2, 2023

At approximately 7:05 p.m., a PA announcer no one apparently likes (poor guy) finally revealed the best-kept secret since up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start Button to the largest college football crowd found anywhere last Saturday (check ya math, Michigan).

From the settled dust of a fierce competition rivaling historic heated tilts like Hammer v. Nail and Obese Man v. Buffet, Penn State sophomore Drew Allar emerged victorious, edging out heel-nippers Beau Pribula and Jaxon Smolik for the starting QB role.

And for all the eye rolls and “come on’s” hurled James Franklin’s direction over the course of the past 5 weeks, perhaps the head coach’s decision to hide his cards and not show his hand until NBC was halfway through the clunkiest pregame show in the history of television was a shrewd, tactical, ingenious ploy.

Because, man, West Virginia looked completely unprepared for Allar’s coronation, didn’t it?

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• Nothing distorts reality more than the veil of great expectations. Was Penn State polished in every aspect this evening? Obviously not. Tackling was hit-and-miss. The kicking game was laughable (if you didn’t have money on the first-half spread, that is). The offensive line failed to maul one of the worst defenses in the Big XII. Receivers dropped a few gimmes. And the linebackers and defensive ends – a supposed strength of this squad – were underwhelming. But, does a 3+TD victory margin justify the waves of digital Chicken Littles spouting prophecies of doom and gloom across message boards and Twitter? IDK maybe.

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