Sponsor: Hey, it’s us! For The Blogy! Join our 2021 FTB Donors Club – the best way for you to show your support and keep this train rolling – and receive an exclusive FTB zipper bottle Koozie as a gift! Sign up HERE. 

*Please remember to click the ‘Share My Address With For The Blogy’ box when checking out so we know where to mail your gift!

Because life is the way it is, and because we try to work a week in advance when scouting Penn State’s opponents, 75 percent of what you’re about to read might be obsolete in 24 hours. The reason? Well, Michigan is pretty banged up.

As of Friday, the status of the following playmakers was still unknown: RB2 Blake Corum, RB3 Donovan Edwards, TE1 Erick All, breakout WR Andrel Anthony and WR AJ Henning.

Continue reading

Sponsor: Hey, it’s us! For The Blogy! Join our 2021 FTB Donors Club – the best way for you to show your support and keep this train rolling – and receive an exclusive FTB zipper bottle Koozie as a gift! Sign up HERE. 

*Please remember to click the ‘Share My Address With For The Blogy’ box when checking out so we know where to mail your gift!

Formations/Philosophy

The hiring of Mike Macdonald – a 34-year-old sporting a coaching resume with experience at every level of football (high school, college, NFL) despite never advancing to anything above a position coach at any of those levels – as Michigan’s new Defensive Coordinator was probably the most criticized move during Jim Harbaugh’s offseason re-shuffling of Titanic deckchairs…but, man, it’s worked out, huh?

Heading into this weekend’s showdown vs. Penn State, the Wolverines rank 6^th nationally in Scoring Defense and are graded as the 3^rd best Pass Rush, according the PFF.

So, how the heck has the relatively green, non-capitalized ‘D’ Macdonald, pulled this off?

Continue reading

There are players who make plays, and then there are playmakers, the rare and oh-so-sought-after cats who have that instinctive ability to be in the right spot at the right time and the brains and balls to take advantage of it.

True playmakers can take a team from good to great (see Barkley, Saquon) or make a mediocre defense look formidable (see Parsons, Micah). They can breed confidence in their teammates and attract the attention of future playmakers. They’re the reason college coaches spend so much time and effort on recruiting and the reason the NFL keeps piling up the cash despite one public relations nightmare after another.

One of those playmakers won a game Penn State had little business winning on Saturday in sleepy College Park, Maryland.

Jahan Dotson was the best player on the field, which he’s been before, and on this day looked like he wouldn’t be an afterthought if the discussion were about the best player in the Big Ten. He shined so brightly that any of his teammates were going to seem dull by comparison and yet, that light also revealed why the Nittany Lions are pretty much an afterthought in early November after such a promising start.

Continue reading

Three players trotted into the end zone with no one around them on Saturday night.

Only one of them scored a touchdown.

Penn State’s 33-24 loss to Ohio State in the Big … uh, Horseshoe was a game defined by big plays. The Buckeyes made enough of them — including a 57-yard scoop and score by defensive tackle Jerron Cage — to hold off a game bunch of Nittany Lions, who went toe-to-toe with the hosts in many ways but made more mistakes than big plays of their own.

Jesse Luketa’s jaunt into the end zone came after he picked up a harmless incomplete pass, and John Lovett’s romp was only after he had run more than a yard out-of-bounds before catching the pass. Neither counted, of course, and it was that kind of evening for the Nittany Lions, an evening of missed opportunities and almosts. Penn State forced a turnover on the first possession, the perfect start for a team looking to pull off a big upset on the road … and then gave the ball back on the very…next…play. Down three early in the final quarter, the Nittany Lions were gifted a turnover on downs when C.J. Stroud missed a wide-open Chris Olave … then gave the ball back four plays later on an ill-advised throw by Sean Clifford that was intercepted by Cameron Brown.

Continue reading

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.

• Wanna know the sickest aspect of this loss tonight? No? Well, too bad. The sickest aspect of this loss tonight is that it’s the type of “Well, if we gotta lose one” setback we all would have killllled for three weeks ago – a close, hard-fought setback worthy of CFP debate had Penn State finished the season at 11-1. (Inset Aunt/Uncle anatomy retort here).

• No moral victories. Not at Penn State. That’s Rutgers stuff. BUUUUUT…the team backed up all the preseason flowery talk of chemistry and closeness with their effort tonight. With nothing but pride on the line, they showed up. In 2020, the dam bursts and Penn State drowns at 17-7 and 27-17. So Yay!

Continue reading

It is tempting, oh so very tempting, to dive into the abyss of the overtime portion of Saturday’s game, and just splash around in the muck and the mire of the botched Boalsburg Special or the runs to nowhere or Brandon Peters’ throw into the stands. There is agony and ecstasy — OK, mostly agony — to be found there, and maybe even some pseudo-inspiring schtick about Penn State defenders who logged roughly 100 snaps (not an exaggeration) in a game in which they were favored by 24 points.

But the longest overtime stretch in college football history is not the story of the day. No, that particular tale is the story of a would-be contender who was finally, painfully, exposed as a fully flawed pretender.

Penn State showed us who it really was in Saturday’s ugly 20-18 loss to a previously 2-5 Illinois team. For most of this season, the Nittany Lions had the markings of a talented team that could rev it up from time to time and was just a few plays or a few days away from putting it all together. The loss at Iowa was maddening and disappointing, to be sure, but could also easily be explained away — the gap from QB1 to QB2 on this particular team was substantial, and QB1 had been doing enough damage before his injury that you could make the case that the Lions could just as easily been 6-0 and sitting at No. 2 in the country as they came out of the bye week.

Continue reading

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.

• Kudos to Arby’s clairvoyant in-house marketing team for landing the title sponsor spot on ABC’s Penn State-Illinois broadcast. Great choice. In fact, I’d say the decision makers in horsey sauce-stained suits couldn’t have picked a more “on-brand” game to advertise on. I mean, this contest WAS Arby’s — soggy, repulsive, depressing, nauseating, disappointing, and really, really, really tough to swallow.

• (Deep breath) Where to even begin…

…guess we’ll dish out credit where credit is due: swollen Illinois HC Bret Bielema authored an masterful run-blocking opus today using an unwanted collection of 300-pounders that he verbally eviscerated five days earlier. The Illini somehow managed to rack up 357 yards on the ground despite posing zero threat through the air. In several standard down situations, Illinois lined up 7 O-linemen, 2 tight ends, 0 wide receivers, and just Red Rover’d right through the unprepared Penn State defense, thus validating every slow-footed Big Ten stereotype your co-worker from Chattanooga or brother-in-law from Houston has ever spouted at you.

Continue reading

Penn State’s bye week fell smack-dab in the middle of the season, making for a clean landmark for those who like to take stock of what a team has done prior to the bye and predict what it will likely do the rest of the way (or for those who have a weekly column space to fill and no game to fill it with).

Few would have been all that surprised if you had told them back in August that the Nittany Lions would arrive at this point at 5-1, though the way they got here would have been a lot more difficult to nail down. Penn State’s defense, which had question marks up front and at one safety spot, has been an absolute terror, answering all of those questions and a few that weren’t even asked while staking its claim as the nation’s fourth-best scoring defense and second-best red zone defense and one that matches up well against a variety of styles.

The offense, at different junctures and at various position groups, has been a pleasant surprise, all-too-predictable disappointment, and more than a bit of a mystery, sometimes in the same quarter (and all that was before it lost its quarterback!). The special teams, after a couple of early hiccups, have been mostly solid, if lacking some of the game-breaking firepower they’ve displayed the last few years.

Continue reading

Enter Understudy, Exit Undefeated Season as Penn State Fans Overload WebMD’s Servers in the Wake of Losing a 23-20 Heartbreaker to the Hawkeyes

Sponsor: Hey, it’s us! For The Blogy! Join our 2021 FTB Donors Club – the best way for you to show your support and keep this train rolling – and receive an exclusive FTB zipper bottle Koozie as a gift! Sign up HERE.

*Please remember to click the ‘Share My Address With For The Blogy’ box when checking out so we know where to mail your gift!

Late in the 4^th Quarter, well aware they couldn’t come close to running out the clock, Iowa’s coaches chose to take consecutive knees on 2^nd and 3^rd down.

I’m gonna type that sentence again for emphasis: Late in the 4^th Quarter, well aware they couldn’t come close to running out the clock, Iowa’s coaches chose to take consecutive knees on 2^nd and 3^rd down.

Pause a second and just let that sink in.

…

…

…

Up a field goal – not 4 points, 5, points, 6 points, or 7 points, or 11 points – and with a makeable 10 yards standing between them and certain victory, Iowa stiff-armed the plausible approach faster than a broke dude shooing away the dessert menu on a crappy first date and instead WILLINGLY surrendered possession back to Penn State with more than 40 SECONDS remaining.

Continue reading

There was a moment late in Saturday’s game when Iowa running back Tyler Goodson picked up decent yardage and, on his way back to the huddle, took some time to strut and pound his chest, as a crammed Kinnick Stadium wildly roared its approval, the momentum firmly on the side of the home team.

Penn State linebacker Ellis Brooks, a few feet away, watched Goodson with a somewhat incredulous look on his face, as though he were wondering if his opponent had forgotten about the three previous hours, when the Nittany Lion defense had Goodson and the Hawkeye offense in figurative shackles.

Look, let’s give Goodson and his teammates and crusty old Kirk Ferentz and the Kinnick crazies their collective due for Iowa’s very Iowa 23-20 win on Saturday. Let’s also not pretend that, if not for one incomplete pass early in the second quarter, this game was well on its way to a wholly different result.

Continue reading