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• Man, beer sales at Beaver Stadium can’t start soon enough, eh?

• In all seriousness…Saturday can’t always be a symphony. Sometimes, like today, it’s a middle school recital. Jagged. Discordant. Off key. Off note. Rough on the senses. Enjoyable to no one besides the parents of the participants. And that’s OK. After surviving Week 1 on the road, and then shellacking an SEC foe on the road in Week 3, a 60-minute sleepwalk through a meddlesome MAC contender and its shark-loving coach shouldn’t have been a shocker to anybody. So, while the message board Chicken Littles on Rivals, 247 and On3 point to the sky, jaws agape, we’ll try our best to keep things in perspective: Penn State won by 3 TDs, won the turnover battle 4-0, and other than slight discomfort shown by 44-Tyler Warren late and the mysterious disappearance of 64-Hunter Nourzad, the Nittany Lions escaped this chore of a contest fairly healthy: mission accomplished.

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War Damn Eagle? Nah, More Like Worn Down Eagle, as Penn State’s Offensive Line Proved  That Speed – Even SEC Speed – Is No Match for a Solid Wall of Competent Blockers

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Just like Seacrest: Orange, Out.

Often imitated but never duplicated, Penn State – creators of the “monochromatic mayhem” known as The Whiteout – sent another color-themed crowd home with an L for the second time in as many opportunities this season.

Despite facing two squads that received votes in the preseason AP Top 25 poll – Purdue and Auburn – both on the road, the Nittany Lions offense has produced Mike Yurcich Results even if they’ve somewhat strayed from traditional Mike Yurcich Methods.

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The scoreboard don’t care how, only how many.

Penn State’s 41-12 smackdown of Auburn in Jordan-Hare Stadium will turn some heads around the country, and will leave the hosts with just as much collective doubt as it will fill the visitors with collective confidence. James Franklin will preach “1-0” until he’s blue in the face, but he knows this win will be enjoyed by his players more than most and, in his private moments, you know he’s enjoying it, too.

Before we start measuring the Nittany Lions’ hat size for conference or national crowns, though, it’s important to look at how Penn State won this game over an opponent that looked very much like it could have a long season in the SEC ahead.

Penn State played exactly the way a team needs to play to win in a hostile environment. The Lions took care of the football, took advantage of their red-zone opportunities and largely capitalized on their opponents’ mistakes. But although they were dominant on the scoreboard—particularly in the second half—they weren’t dominant on the field for much of the game.

Only when they needed to be.

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• Hang Manny Diaz’s gameplan in the freakin’ Lourve, Frenchie. Move over, Mona. Later, Leonardo. Behold you Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys (Groundskeeper Willie’s words, not ours). Make room for this masterpiece and stick it behind a few strands of velvet rope for safety. When all the damage was done, and all the Van Heusen-clad, three-named, thick-banged Southern Dandy students had filed out of Jordan-Hare, Penn State snuck out of The Plains with 4 takeaways, 6 sacks, 11 TFLs, all while grounding Auburn’s mauling run game to an unremarkable 3.3 yards per carry. Beyond the stats, Penn State’s D dominated in the trenches, clamped down at the second and third levels of the defense, and was in such total control that all James Franklin had to do on offense was not screw things up.

• The nonsensical 4^th Quarter ramblings of CBS color analyst Gary Danielson offered us the perfect mental off-ramp from the game…or what was left of it. It also got us thinking: What’s the best historical parallel for this game? Note: Please don’t go all Mother Dunn on us, Mortimer, OK? According to Vegas, this was a slightly-weighted coinflip that Penn State turned into an entertaining clown show for those wearing white and a complete waste of a sunny afternoon for those wearing orange. Not sure Michigan 2017 fits in this bucket considering Penn State entered as a 8 -to 9-point favorite. The ONE game that does compare (in our eyes, anyway) is Wisconsin 2008….road game, big-time opponent, thorough behind-whooping. 1999 Arizona works, too. Any others come to mind?

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A Couple of Young, True Freshmen ‘Nursery Lions’ Graced the Beaver Stadium Stage for the First Time and Wound Up Stealing The Show as the Vets Rest for an SEC Showdown.

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(Dino Babers postgame preacher voice)…Click link for context. Jokes are always funnier when you have to explain them first. Comedy 101.

THE LAST TIME IT HAPPENED…the 2020 Chevy Equinox, outfitted with a 1.5-Liter Turbo Engine, EPA-estimated 39 MPG Highway Rating, and Low-Speed Forward Automatic Braking, was the baddest thing on the road!

(gathered crowd yells in approval)

THE LAST TIME IT HAPPENED…’WAP’ topped the charts, as a torn nation collectively came together to determine, once and for all, whether there were or whether there were not some W***** In This House?!?!

(Awkward, scattered, confused claps)

THE LAST TIME IN HAPPENED…gas was $2.10 a gallon, Baby Yoda dolls were on back order, Antonio Valentino was Antonio Shelton, musicians we’ve never heard of had their own personal combo meals on sale at McDonald’s, the Queen of England was a spry 94, and Sean Clifford was a senior.

(Silence…not even a cricket chirp)

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Love was in the air for the Nittany Lions in their home opener against Ohio, in the form of a feathery 32-yard touchdown pass from rookie quarterback Drew Allar to rookie receiver Omari Evans, and it was on the ground, in the form of 179 yards and two big-play tuddies from freshman Nick Singleton. A dozen true freshmen saw the field for the home team in a mostly clean, well-rounded 46-10 pounding of an overmatched MAC squad, but Allar and Singleton were the darlings of the crowd, and they underscored what has been an inescapable theme of the season:

Now that Penn State has found love, what are they gonna do with it?

This was the game plan James Franklin had talked about executing all week, and it didn’t involve scheme or audibles. Rather, Franklin had emphasized the importance of developing depth, of getting some of these young and exciting players live reps when it counted, especially during one of the few weeks on the schedule that wasn’t supposed to be a four-quarter rock fight.

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• 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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Lions & Twists & Stunts, Oh My! Billed as an Exotic Break From the Brent Pry Norm, Act One of ‘The Manny Diaz Experience’ Turned Out to be Surprisingly Efficient and Effective, as well.

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Thanks for nothing, Fox Sports Graphics Team.

As the rest of you spent this holiday weekend celebrating the American workforce by driving around town in your Japanese-made cars, floating atop your Chinese-made innertubes, and sipping German beer, the infrequently hard-working folks at FTB were vigorously spinning the hamster wheel of creativity, desperate to find the perfect lead for the inaugural ‘Hindsight’ review of the Manny Diaz era.

After racking our brains for literally dozens of seconds, we spent the next hour screwing around on our phones watching some disembodied voice rip open packs of junk wax baseball cards from the 1980s (oddly soothing and satisfying, highly recommend). Then, we snapped back to the task at hand, re-focused for a good minute, and settled on this corny bit where we turned two Manny Diaz defensive formations into Rorschach inkblots and had an imaginary psychward patient guess the down and distance.

There was just one problem…the ‘splotchy’ EFX on Photoshop wasn’t enough to blur out Fox’s superimposed on-field down and distance graphic, thus ruining the bit. Such a shame.

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Though James Franklin’s well-worn weekly 1-0 objective was met, reviews of Mike Yurcich’s Year 2 debut vary from ‘meh’ to ‘Man, not this again.’

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If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then surely embedding the viral gif of Purdue safety Chris Jefferson’s Puke-6 regurgitation celebration – a true Icky Shuffle – into this blog post should thoroughly summarize Penn State’s 2022 opening act on offense.

But we’re not going to do that. Shocking, we know.

Given the sophomoric DNA of this media enterprise, you have every reason to drop your jaw and raise your eyebrow(s) right now. Leading off the third season of ‘Hindsight’ with a man vomiting on live television is the content equivalent of a hanging slider, right over the plate, seconds after the clubhouse attendant banged on a trash can to let us know what’s coming…and yet, we’re taking the figurative pitch, 1. Because it’s super gross, repulsive, humiliating, offensive, distasteful, crude, objectionable, and, according to the fable of David Hogan from the movie Stand By Me, a dangerous contagious projectile, and 2. …

…Because every time we tried to embed the gif, WordPress crashed.

Stupid technology.

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Ever procrastinate? Sure you have. You’ve put stuff off that probably should have been done today, and sometimes, you get a lucky break along the way—the boss decides he doesn’t need that presentation from you for another week, or your wife decides she wants to get a different tile for that bathroom renovation you’ve been putting off. So you feel justified in procrastinating. But you’re really not.

For the first, oh, 56 minutes of Penn State’s opener at Purdue, a disaster scenario was shaping up for the Nittany Lions. Sean Clifford was playing like, well, Sean Clifford, lifting the Nittany Lions to a healthy lead early then helping the Boilers get right back in it with a flurry of wildly inaccurate passing in the second half. The disaster part is that, when Clifford missed a series while getting an IV, Drew Allar came in the game and, in just four passes, stole the hearts of every Penn State fan and gave us an oh-so-brief but oh-so-tantalizing glimpse of what could be. Those four passes resulted in two completions, a drop, and a wobbly (but fast-moving) duck that had no chance, but damn it, the kid looked the part. Never mind the accuracy and the velocity, but he showed a true pocket presence—eyes downfield, feet moving but never retreating—that a certain other quarterback has shown for only slivers of a six-year career.

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