Closing in on the backend of a “two-game season,” Penn State can rewrite or reinforce the emerging narrative about the team versus the Terrapins.

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Did we just witness a turning point in Penn State football history?

Some readers seemed to really enjoy my slipping in a reference to simulation theory at the very end of last week’s column, so let’s start things out this time around with another popular artifact of theoretical physics for the everyman and invoke the concept of many worlds: Somewhere in the multiverse, there is a timeline where the closing sequence of last week’s Indiana game is destined for enshrinement in program lore.

Back in Beaver Stadium a week removed from a devastating loss to Ohio State in Columbus that all but crushed their playoff hopes and touched off a week of national criticism, the Nittany Lions led lowly Indiana by only three points late in the game. After setting an NCAA record with the most passing attempts prior to throwing his first interception, Drew Allar appeared to bury his struggling team by finding the worst possible moment, at the worst part of the field, against the worst possible opponent to toss that fateful pick.

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Hallelujah! An explosive play! For the win!

For our formerly comatose readers who just woke up, first of all, welcome back. Second, here’s what you missed: The biggest concern/gripe with the Nittany Lions offense through the first half of the 2023 season has been the unexpected Dust Bowl drought when it comes to explosive, chunk plays – both through the air and on the ground.

As Coach Franklin confirmed in his most-recent postgame presser, the Lions try to call 8-12 “shot plays” a game. Mishaps in pass protection, lack of separation down the field, mild lack of aggression by the QB, and good opposing coverage are all contributing reasons to why they have not been successful in this department.

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You would be hard-pressed to find better symbolism than KeAndre Lambert-Smith’s tightrope tap dance down the sideline late in Saturday’s 9-point Penn State defeat of Indiana in Beaver Stadium. Yes, the Lions’ top receiver reached the end zone for the decisive score after hauling in a rainbow from his young quarterback (more on that in a minute), but, on that play as in the rest of the afternoon, Penn State was walking a very thin line as it needed nearly 59 minutes to put away the Big Ten’s least threatening team.

In one sense, that wasn’t all that much of a surprise given how mentally flattening the Lions’ last game had been and the decided decline in quality of opponent. In another, more important sense, it was even less of a surprise given the state we saw the offense in last week. Unfortunately for Penn State, it was much of the same for much of the game this week.

The Nittany Lions’ first six possessions resulted in four punts, a missed field-goal attempt, and one touchdown. That’s the sort of production (as we saw last week) that is not going to get it done against the country’s top defenses, but this time it was against an Indiana unit that had entered the game allowing more points and yards against conference opposition than any Big Ten defense. Penn State did recover to score 17 points on its next three possessions, sandwiching two sustained touchdown drives around halftime and a field goal set up by a Jaylen Reed interception, but even that two-minute drill was unsatisfying, capped by a (correct) intentional grounding call against Drew Allar. Then came two more punts and Allar’s first pick of the season, which set up a game-tying field goal by Indiana and quickly turned the day from “classic sloppy hangover noon kick win” to “OMG is this actually going to be a loss … to Tom Allen?”

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Clobbered by the Buckeyes yet again, Penn Staters enter this weekend struggling to reconcile their perceptions of the program with reality.

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A couple of years ago, one of my first assignments for this website was to write about the state of the football program heading into the 2021 season. Coming off the putrid 4-5 “fake season” of 2020, many were questioning whether James Franklin had lost the plot. I decided to come at it from both angles, examining both the reasonable argument that everything was fine, and most issues could be explained away by extraordinary circumstance, as well as the equally rational notion that the program was adrift.

One particular sentence from that article came back to me this weekend as I pondered how to fill this space in the wake of last Saturday’s crushing disappointment…

So it may just be that we’re Helen Hunt, the Fiesta Bowl is Jack Nicholson, and this is as good as it gets. [emphasis added]

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While it’s impossible to place the entire blame for Saturday’s kick-in-the-shins performance against Ohio State on one person or thing, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that a better 3^rd-down showing (like even a D+ showing) might have made the difference in a one-score game. In situations that required a singular yard, specifically, the Nittany Lions repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with a mix of mental and physical errors.

Tomorrow, Coach Codutti will cycle through all 16 Penn State 3^rd-down scenarios in his weekly Film Study, but since we’re gluttons for pain, here’s a small taste before the main course arrives late Monday night.

Sigh

Hold your nose. Here we go.

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The final drive was the hardest to watch.

You could argue that any of the previous six second-half possessions by what passed for Penn State’s offense Saturday, which added up to — trigger warning — 36 yards in 25 plays, would have been the toughest to watch, as they collectively built on a string of ineptitude previously not seen from the 2023 team, and, really, not even any offense in the James Franklin Era, with the possible exception of the time Christian Hackenberg was sacked approximately 316 times in the loss at Temple in 2015.

But the final, pre-onside kick drive, when Drew Allar actually connected with a few receivers for decent gains, including the dart to Kaden Saunders on a broken play for the Lions’ only touchdown of the day, was more painful still, because it reminded you that Penn State wasn’t completely bereft of talent, as all of its other offensive possessions that day had so strongly suggested. It reminded you that Allar had, in fact, completed passes before and is likely to do so again, that his linemen provided him with some time to do so and his receivers were physically capable of hauling those passes in.

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More than a decade of nearly uninterrupted futility makes victory in Columbus feel out of reach, but Penn Staters should dare to imagine a bigger picture.

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This column aspires to frame a “travel narrative” around the journey of Penn State’s 2023 football season, a chronicle of the Nittany Lions’ path toward their destination parceled out over 12 – plus three?? – installments (we won’t count the Bye week’s digression about scheduling Pitt).

For the most ardent enthusiasts of college football, one of its most beautiful aspects is the way in which the seven-day cycles linking each game day to the next take on their own character. The previous week’s result, the upcoming opponent, and the many tempests in the internet teapot that suddenly bubble up (and disappear just as quickly) combine to imbue each successive week with a unique flavor. Already this year, we’ve had enough James Franklin press conference gems to fill an entire season, not to mention the student section service dog (what a good boy!).

We remember the outcomes, but often the events between kickoffs become just as much as part of the story. Taken together, they help us mark the passage of time in our lives.

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Ladies and gentlemen, our long regional nightmare is over. Penn State tight end Theo Johnson finally got in the endzone for the first (and second!) time in 2023. Strike up the band! Plan the parade! Mint the commemorative coins!

In all seriousness, after spending the first half of the season doing dirty work in the trenches and getting unlucky in substitution patterns that have given his counterpart, Tyler Warren, some cupcake TDs, it was nice to see the senior captain from Canada cross the goal line – and, more importantly, haul-in a deep, downfield target.

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The nothingburger of the week was made from James Franklin’s comments on the way an unnamed conference opponent (rhymes with “Witch again”) schedules, er, less than staunch non-conference opponents. A few media outlets twisted the remarks to make it seem as though the Penn State coach was taking a shot at, um, the Jewel Vereens, when in fact Franklin was actually complimenting the program for a strategy he has used consistently since he arrived nine years ago.

Which brings us to Saturday’s game against the fighting Minutemen of Massachusetts, who put up about the resistance most expected (almost none) in a 63-0 loss to the Nittany Lions. When Penn State put this game on the schedule in January 2019, UMass had been an FBS program for only five seasons and had won a total of 16 games in that time period. Since that time, the Minutemen are 4-44, including Saturday’s loss.

In a brief and half-hearted defense of Franklin, and the coach he wasn’t taking a shot at, and basically the heads of all Power 5 programs, I get it. There is no point in going out of your way to schedule difficult non-conference games if A) Everyone else is doing it and B) Your conference schedule has the juice to get you to a playoff on its own.

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