2023 Season

Dispensing Thoughts & Opinions: Penn State vs. Illinois

Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2023  football coverage is sponsored by FANATICS. Gear up for the Sept. 23 Penn State White Out vs. Iowa with t-shirts, shorts, ball caps, and player jerseys from FTB’s Fanatics store right HERE.

• Taking a cue from our spirit animal, Thumper The Rabbit: The Nittany Lions offense excelled in putting together an expansive library full of teachable/correctable film today. Is that nice enough? Good job, good effort.

• Penn State Twitter/X needs to chill out. Far be it from us to stand on a digital soapbox and tell you how to live your life, but…IDK, perhaps consider taking a breath and letting the game age more than 8 real-time minutes before your twitchy fingers extrapolate Chicken Little absolute truths from a half-dozen plays? On the opening drive, Penn State’s defense surrendered 46 yards, 3 first downs, and 0 points. That’s it. That’s all. And yet, in response to that decent initial effort, the online venom flowed like Niagara. 5 turnovers, 3 sacks, and 7 TFL later, well, those 12:19 EST tweets/X’s aged worse than a two-term U.S. president.

• Speaking of the defense, how close is the Manny Diaz hire to equalling/surpassing the Joe Moorhead hire? Moorhead gets the benefit of extinguishing a raging tire fire left by the departed John Donovan, but Diaz has — to borrow a phrase from James Franklin — taken something that was already “great” and made it “elite.”

• For as off-kilter as Drew Allar looked, the beautiful, Fabergé egg ball he threw to Liam Clifford down the sidelines in the final seconds of a forgettable first half completely flipped the going-into-the-locker-room narrative. YUGE difference between heading in to feast on orange slices and Capri-Suns up 9 points compared to up 6.

• Nick Singleton’s 3 receptions for 49 yards was the flower than bloomed from the pot of dirt that was the Penn State offense. In 2022, Singleton was tagged with 4 drops in 17 targets – an abysmal ratio. What’s worse, when we examined Singleton’s pass-catching film this summer, it appeared that he lacked the natural coordination/feel to ever develop into a reliable receiver…which is kind of a prerequisite for any back wishing to land in the NFL Draft’s 1st Round. Well, turns out, we were wrong. Not only did Singleton catch the ball with confidence today, his route-running leveled up considerably since last fall. Completely different receiver.

• Psst, Coach Franklin…might wanna cool it on the whole ‘this is the most talented offensive line since I’ve been here’ talk. Through 3 games, it’s quite clear that the unexpected loss of projected starting left guard Landon Tengwall was a bigger setback than the fanbase cared to acknowledge when the bad news initially broke.

• Did Fox play-by-play announcer/Cartier Buffs connoisseur Gus Johnson drop his ice cream cone on the sidewalk Saturday morning? My gosh. You’re at a college football game, not cleaning sludge from the gutters atop a rickety ladder. Show a little enthusiasm! For a guy known for shouting Volume 11 ‘Gus-gasms’, his call of Kaytron Allen’s 4-yard touchdown was delivered with ‘Is it in yet?’ disdain. Here, have a listen:

•Full disclosure: we aren’t sports agents or NFL cap-ologists or anything cool like that…but according to our TI-81 calculations, Illinois defensive lineman Jer’Zhan “Johnny” Newton made himself Eleventy Bajillion Dollars today – give or take a bajillion. Dude was a one-man, midriff-exposed wrecking ball. Trying to recall a more impactful, dominant opponent player performance vs. Penn State in a blowout (-ish) loss? Anybody got anything? (Yes this is a transparent, forced effort intended to spark user engagement in our terribly formatted comment section).

September 16, 2023by FTB Staff