Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

• Throughout the offseason, we paid tribute to the infamous, ludicrous, incredibly loose-jowled Beano Cook/Ron Powlus 2 Heisman prediction from 1993 by applying the same lofty expectations any time we mentioned 5-star PSU true freshman Drew Allar in a video, blog post, tweet, Facebook comment, etc…you know, to be funny. Turns out – according to the tents pitched on Penn State twitter around 2:30 pm EST today — we set the bar WAAAAAY too low with our Beano homage.

• In all seriousness, the quantum leap Allar has taken in 5 months – from shaky, raw, multiple-red-flags rookie in the Blue-White Game to the surprisingly poised, surprisingly in-command , surprisingly advanced thrower we’ve seen in limited snaps vs. Purdue and now Ohio – is a credit to not only the work Allar put in during the summer months, but a credit to Mike Yurcich’s ability to mold talented lumps of clay.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

When you think of Penn State, what indelible images/mental snapshots come to mind?

Racing to finish two scoops of Peachy Paterno as it melts under the merciless sun of an Arts Fest weekend…Saying hello to the extrovert squirrels frolicking across the Old Main lawn…Choking on the musty smell of books sandwiched within the Pattee Stacks…Baking on Beaver Stadium’s metal bleachers as Penn State toys with a non-conference pushover to open the home slate.

All good choices.

But, for us anyway, there’s another image – an off-the-radar Penn State image – that always warms the cockles of our heart every time we spot it in Happy Valley.

It’s a bottle of Old Grand-Dad whiskey, proudly positioned on a shelf (not the top shelf), iconic label staring you down from behind the bar.

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Sponsor: Whether tailgating in Happy Valley or watching the action at home, take your Saturday spread to the next level with Sauces, BBQ Dry Rubs and Bloody Mary Mix from the 409 Tailgate Club. Visit 409’s Online Store HERE.

• Gus Johnson: “That’s one of the best drives, Joel Klatt, that I’ve ever seen!” Gus…buddy…look…you’re excited; I’m excited; we’re all excited, OK? But, please, a little perspective. You do realize there’s a drive called THE DRIVE, right? Right?

• Good lord, where to start? Scrolling back and re-reading our in-game Twitter feed (before the phone died…thanks Jobs), we were pretty damn grouchy, so why don’t we flip the script and shovel down our ice cream before we hold our nose and force-swallow that pile of lima beans so Mom lets us leave the table and go to bed.

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Introduction

Finally, the season is upon us! Bring on the first college football Saturday Thursday!

Much like last year, the Big Ten schedule makers left Penn State no room for non-conference creampuff foreplay as the Nittany Lions are forced to go in raw against another winning Big Ten West foe to get things started. And much like last year, one of the largest preseason questions marks looming over Penn State’s 2022 fortunes is the potential potency of the offense.

Rightly or wrongly, for better or worse, most of the uncertainty falls on the shoulders of QB1 Sean Clifford.

Clifford’s QB counterpart in the season opener is Purdue’s Aidan O’Connell – an unheralded walk-on and one time 8^th string QB on the Boilermakers depth chart (seriously, that isn’t a joke. He was.) who somehow morphed into an All-Big Ten thrower. Statistically speaking, O’Connell ranked 2^nd or 3^rd in most major passing categories last year, only trailing behind Ohio State QB/G Wagon driver CJ Stroud, a Heisman finalist.

Now that we’ve set both QBs up, let’s compared the two, shall we?

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Once a Promising Young Runner Brimming with Upside, the Nittany Lions Presumed Starter to Start the Year Has to Sharpen Several Aspects of his Game to STAY the Starter at the End of the Year

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Seems like several lifetimes ago by now, but remember that Keyvone Lee earned PFF grades of 75+ in both rushing and receiving in 2020. Purdue’s Zander Horvath is the only other B1G RB who can make that same boast; he’s playing for the Chargers now.

Both players averaged 4.9 yards/carry that year.

In 2021, Lee averaged…4.9 yards/carry. Not a step back, but not the step forward expected after what he did in his first season in blue and white.

Suddenly there are a couple of talented freshmen (Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen) ready to do to Lee what he did to Noah Cain. The good news – for Keyvone – is he 100% has the tools to headline a RB room and ward off four- and five-star teammates from snatching away carries.

Let’s break down what he has to do to avoid transferring and fading from our collective memory while exhausting his eligibility at some forgettable C-USA or Sun Belt football “farm upstate.”

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