Dispensing Thoughts & Opinions – Penn State vs. Ohio

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.

• 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.

• 3 bulletpoints in…time for some negativity. Anyone else worried Penn State’s 2022 WRs = Penn State’s 2021 RB and TE units? By that we mean a group that coaches and fans gushed about all preseason, supposedly overflowing with game-changing talent and depth, that produced unspectacular results between the sidelines. Sure feels that way. Hard to tell from the TV broadcast angle, but we suspect the WRs’ inability to get open was the reason why Sean Clifford held the ball as long as he did on a handful of ugly snaps in the first half. We keep waiting and waiting and waiting for Mike Yurcich’s vaunted vertical passing concepts to take this offense to the next level, but so far, no dice.

• One storyline that didn’t seem to garner too much attention during the spring, summer, or fall camp was the redemption of Manny Diaz. Sorry to go all Collinsworth on you, but here’s a guy who had to deal with the public humiliation of Miami attempting to replace him WHILE DIAZ WAS STILL THE FREAKIN’ HEAD COACH OF THE HURRICANES! According to media reports, if Miami brass and boosters couldn’t find a big enough Brinks Truck to lure away Mario Cristobal from Oregon, then Diaz would have stayed as a consolation coach…like he’s a box of Rice-a-Roni the losers on Jeopardy! got in the 80s and 90s or something. Disrespectful doesn’t do Diaz’s departure justice. It’s early but, man, it really looks like Diaz is coaching with Sisyphus’ boulder strapped to his shoulder, doesn’t it? He’s coaching pissed. Coaching angry. Coaching with something to prove. Ohio had to empty out the entire clown car in order to cross the goal line today. Beyond that, Diaz’s defense was immaculate.

• Anybody get a good glimpse of what Jordan van den Berg was carrying as he ran out of the tunnel? The hosts at the ‘No Names, All Game Podcast’ (Friends of the Blog) thought it was a sledgehammer. And it might have been. But from our vantage point (a recliner 2,300 miles away from Happy Valley) it looked more like an oversized mallet, like something you’d swing and pound to win your girlfriend a kewpie doll at a 1930s carnival. Whatever it was, we can guarantee you every Penn State fan over 55 years old hated it.

• Amazing how speed and the uncoachable gift to make dudes miss, even when your blocking crumbles like a sandcastle in a tsunami, fixes a run game, isn’t it?

• Was all set to give Jake Pinegar an ‘atta-boy’ for finally figuring out how to kick with loft and height after we all endured multiple seasons of paint-scraping , unnecessarily-suspenseful PATs and FGs…then, well, you know. Lesson learned: never say anything nice — or even indifferent — about kickers ever again.

• “Why doesn’t Penn State just run the 2-minute-drill on every possession?” is the new, “Why don’t they build the whole plane out of the stuff they use to make the blackbox?”