Friday Column: Penn State Again Toes The Line Between ‘Great and Elite’ But Little Flaws Prevent Lions From Crossing it

At this level of football, where the talent is so evenly matched and the margins are so, so slim, the outcomes become less about the stellar plays and more about the mistakes.

Penn State made the biggest error on a night both teams committed their fair share, Drew Allar’s inexplicable interception with 33 seconds left that set up Notre Dame’s game-winning field goal, but the Nittany Lions made more than enough mistakes big and small before that to bring what had been a strong postseason run to a sobering end.

The Nittany Lions did a lot of good stuff in their final game of the season. They ran for 204 yards. They turned the Fighting Irish over twice and nearly came up with another on a Notre Dame fumble. They responded after the Irish had scored 17 unanswered points to take a 7-point fourth-quarter lead, then came up with a big stop in the final minute to give Allar and the offense a chance to win the game or at least send it into overtime.

But, upon closer inspection, it was a performance built more on sand than stone.

Penn State played a mostly clean first half, but the halftime scoreboard read 10-3, which did not reflect the extent to which the Lions had dominated the Irish, out-running a running team 141 yards to 15. They left some points on the field, most notably when Allar failed to connect with a wide-open Nick Singleton near the goal line and they settled for three. Should it have been a better throw? Yes. Could it have been caught? Yes. That, sadly, was only a preview for the lack of precision in the second half.

You want to talk about thin margins? How about the third-effort touchdown run by Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love? Was it a tremendous run from a player who was powering through an injury? Absolutely. Would Abdul Carter, under normal circumstances, have gone for the tackle instead of making a swipe at the ball before Love lunged over the goal line? Certainly. Would Carter have recovered that aforementioned fumble had he not been favoring his busted shoulder? Probably.

Margins? What about Singleton leaning forward before the snap, one of very few penalties called on either team by an officiating crew which (thankfully) was determined to let both teams play? He picked up 10 yards on the next play, which would have been a first down had he not committed the foul, and Penn State wound up punting after falling two yards short a couple of plays later. Or Cam Miller, whose slip and fall at the line of scrimmage allowed a defense that made opponents fight for every inch all season to give up a quick-strike, 54-yard touchdown?

Penn State, which got another Herculean performance from tight end Tyler Warren, did not complete a single pass to a wide receiver Thursday. Winning a game in such fashion would have been insanely on brand for this group; unfortunately, so was losing a game in such fashion. And it wasn’t so much a matter of those receivers dropping passes or Allar overshooting them (we’ll get to him in a second, folks), but a product of how much Andy Kotelnicki built the offense around 44, 10, and 13. The wideouts were just blocking and getting cardio in, by design, and Penn State was able to win that way for most of the season.

And it might have won that way again, too, on Thursday had Allar not saved his worst game of the season for last. The junior quarterback was 12 of 23 for 135 yards and one interception, and even early on, when the running game was rolling, he was just … off. Moving a bit too fast, throwing without a stable platform, not making the decision to run as quickly as he usually does. His stat line would have included two more picks if not for Irish penalties. That’s a credit to a Notre Dame defense that turns people over like no one else in the country, but it also undercuts the very real progress Allar made both technically and mentally this season. Any chance he had of leaving early for the NFL, despite his already announced decision to stay for his senior year, floated away in Miami. He’ll need wide receiver reinforcements next year, especially with Warren’s departure, but he’ll also need to reduce his tendency to let a less-than-sharp game turn downright sloppy.

When you look at this game compared with the Lions’ first two playoff performances, double-digit wins against strong if not elite teams, it’s a disappointment. When you look at it in the context of the larger season, though, it’s not that much of an outlier. The execution wasn’t there in losses to Ohio State and Oregon, not in the big moments anyway. This team never quite figured out a way to dodge mistakes of various sizes, and it proved fatal against a team that, aside from its own turnovers, found ways to make the play in those big moments.

This game, particularly if Notre Dame is able to win one more, will go down in the Irish’s fabled history as one of the classics, a back-and-forth affair that ended with a walk-off. That Penn State could have come out on the right side of it, with only a couple of plays difference, is little consolation for a team that, once again, looked like it belonged on the stage, if not in the starring role, for most of the night. But when you get on that stage, you’ve got to know your lines and hit your marks. In what was one hell of a season for Penn State, it’ll be those blown lines and missed marks that haunt the next few months or years, regardless of how good this team looked for most of the night on that stage.