Dispensing Thoughts and Opinions – Penn State vs. Wisconsin
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• Please excuse any typos. My fingers won’t stop shaking. And to our neighbors, sorry about the yelling.
• If this isn’t Brent Pry’s finest hour, it’s pretty damn close. Ohio State 2016? Iowa 2017 or 2019? Do those performances top this one? Even factoring in ‘prisoner of the moment’ syndrome, I don’t think they do. For 42 minutes, 51 seconds, Wisconsin’s well-fed maulers slugged Penn State’s defense right in the mouth and like some deranged masochist with cauliflower ear the Nittany Lions smiled and asked for more. I’m sure this exact stat will eventually leak out on Twitter, but until it does, I can’t imagine Wisconsin’s record in games in which they possessed the ball for 40-plus minutes isn’t undefeated….well, until today, obviously. From a technical standpoint, the two glaring issues that we highlighted ad nauseam throughout our 2020 Penn State defense Film Studies – fitting run gaps and communication breakdowns in the secondary – weren’t a problem today.
• Sticking with the ‘Finest Hour’ theme, could we say the same of Strength & Conditioning coach Dwight Galt? Yeah, it’s cool to get guys to run fast , dart through cones, and jump high while wearing next to nothing in front of middle-aged men holding stopwatches. But far too often, especially against Top-15, championship-caliber competition, those freakish testing numbers never jumped off the page and onto the field of play. Well, today they did. Arnold Ebiketie’s 8-month physical transformation – from 235-pound run liability to 256-pound game-wrecker/future millionaire – made him looked like a different human than the guy we scouted on pirated All-22 Temple film. Despite gaining 30ish pounds, PJ Mustipher was far more explosive and disruptive than we’ve ever seen. If I didn’t have money on the Alabama-Miami first-half OVER, I’d go on and on and on. But I do, so I won’t.
• When the clock strikes midnight and December 16, 2021 flips to December 17, James Franklin and Mike Yurcich better figure out some stealth way to buy then-21-year-old Noah Cain a beer for catching that maddening, clunky, disaster-waiting-to-happen 2nd and 10 pass on Penn State’s final drive. BWI and FightOnState message boards would have went full Chernobyl if that ball hit the ground and Wisconsin was gifted 40 extra seconds, and rightfully so. I guess it’s safe pass, but in that moment the risk far outweighed the reward.
• Guess we can shelve the “Is this the year Penn State’s offensive line becomes a team strength?” question for another year, huh? Cans of Spam will spoil before ‘YES’ is the answer. What an absolute nightmare. Perhaps reintroducing crowd noise into the gameday equation had some negative impact but, man, this entire unit – in particular hyped-up All-Big Ten tackles Rasheed Walker and Caedan Wallace – appeared lost and completely out of sync.
• The most promising aspect of Sean Clifford’s up-and-down afternoon was his composure in the pocket and willingness to stay put when the scene got cluttered and uncomfortable. Watch Clifford’s first touchdown to Jahan Dotson, again. On this play, 2020 and 2019 would have Clifford dropped his eyes and run for two yards. But on Saturday, 2021 Clifford avoids the interior rush and buys enough time for Dotson scoot beyond the deepest defender.
• Jaquan Brisker. Peleton/SoulCycle NIL deal. Make it happen.
• Sucks that Jordan Stout wet the bed twice in the second half, because his punting prowess on Saturday was a MASSIVE key to victory that no one will talk about because, well, he wet the bed. On 7 punts, Stout averaged 53.9 yards while limiting the Badgers to just 8 return yards.
• On a scale of 0.0 to 0.1 how uninspiring must it be for a 20-year-old stud athlete to run out of the Camp Randall tunnel to a U2 song from 1987? According to Wikipedia, U2 lead singer Bono wrote the lyrics to “Where the Streets Have No Name” in response to the notion that in Belfast, Northern Ireland it’s possible to identify a person’s religion and income based on the street on which they lived. Fascinating (yawn). NOW LET’S GO OUT THERE AND KICK SOME ASS!
• And now the Debbie Downer portion of this blog post…pray victory cures all because the physical toll of this game feels like it could linger for weeks. Unfortunately, the Nittany Lions’ front-loaded schedule doesn’t offer room for rest and recovery. Rows of ice tubs should line the tarmac when Penn State touches down at SCE later tonight.
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