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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