For the Penn State offense, it’s starting to feel like 2020 again, boys and girls. And, believe it or not, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

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We were promised fireworks – the big, loud, colorful, explode-y sort; the kind your Instagram followers (or Facebook friends if you’re 55) insist on posting every July 4^th for reasons that escape us – but through four weeks our hands are starting to burn from holding sparklers too long.

We were told this would be a thrill ride in a Ferrari – fast, exhilarating, the ultimate six-figure neutralizer of height and physical appearance – and instead we’re stuck in a Ford Fiesta Uber with a driver who won’t stop talking. Yeah, sure, we’re reaching our desired destination but the journey from Point A to Point B  has been several galaxies shy of glamorous thus far.

All off-season, pundits gabbed we’d see the best of Mike Yurcich. You know, deep balls flung all across the yard. Rainbows. Points-a-plenty. Home run carries. Pixie dust. Puppy dogs. Exotic formations that feel like your first kiss. Tempo. Smashmouth spread. Taco Bell at 3:14 a.m., eight drinks deep. And yet, if anybody had the gumption to tug at the third-year PSU OC’s five-o’-clock shadow, it wouldn’t shock us if the guy pulling the offensive levers is really Kirk Ciarrocca in a Scooby Doo “bad guy” mask.

Statistically speaking, the 2023 Penn State offense makes zero sense. Blue and White bizzarro world.

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As in football as in life, the best-laid schemes…something, something, something. Sorry, we never read the poem.

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Not that the Nittany Lions needed to do anything too fancy, but Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich called a pretty methodical, vanilla game – which, I suppose, is a fitting flavor for a White Out.

Tasked with scoring one point (1!) to best the stacked-on-cinderblocks, front-lawn jalopy that is Brian Ferentz’s offensive attack (double entendre), Penn State’s bland recipe for success leaned on its beefy blockers to win at the line of scrimmage, stacked bruising-but-boring drive-sustaining runs, and tossed in an occasional play-action opportunity in the Red Zone to boost QB Drew Allar’s stat line.

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Was Penn State playing a little possum in the first three weeks of the season? Did it decide sometime this week or even this summer that it was going to beat Iowa in pitch-perfect Kirk Ferentz fashion? Does Drew Allar owe Jalen Hurts usage rights fees for the Tush Push?

These are the things we found ourselves pondering late in the rarest of rarities, a 31-0 Penn State blowout/shutout of perennial nemesis Iowa. In what looked like the perfect conditions for a classic Hawkeye Cro-Magnon rock fight, in which the punters are the best and most active players on the field and modern offense is rendered moot, James Franklin’s team started slowly but steadily, took reasonable control of the game in the first half and then blew it open after halftime, doing so with a running game that continued to wear down a very good Iowa defense, a diverse passing attack that utilized the tight end in very much the same way Iowa has haunted Penn State defenses over the years, and a defense that made a Brian Ferentz offense look even more feeble than usual, if such a thing is actually possible.

Whew.

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Don’t bet on an easy outing against Iowa, the trickster antagonist that’s tormented Penn State.

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Even in these declining days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which captivated audiences and ruled the box office during the 2010s, if you bring up the character of Loki to most people, it conjures Tom Hiddleston’s performance as chief antagonist in the first Avengers film and a recurring enemy (but occasional ally) of Earth’s mightiest heroes. The comic book creation on which the movie character is based was derived from actual Norse mythology, in which Loki is typically the mischief maker and obstacle to the forces of good, but every so often, the critical keystone to advancing the hero’s progress.

Here’s how Wikipedia describes the mythological figure who inspired the modern version we know from comics and cinema:

Scholars have debated Loki’s origins and role in Norse mythology, which some have described as that of a trickster god. Loki’s relation with the gods varies by source; he sometimes assists the gods and sometimes behaves maliciously towards them.

On the big screen, Loki earned his status as the archnemesis viewers loved to hate by attempting to conquer the planet and subjugate humanity, repeatedly betraying his heroic brother Thor, and generally making life miserable for all our favorite superheroes. Despite this track record of deception and destruction, the on-screen character has kept true to his real-life inspiration by emerging as an unlikely anti-hero in later installments of a meta-narrative that spans films and streaming shows.

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Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich continues to show he’s a softy for these century-old classic concepts

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If you had third-string Penn State running back Trey Potts throwing a balloon ball touchdown on your Saturday bingo card this week, well, A) You drew the worst bingo card in the history of bingo and B) You’re one lucky SOB.

In all seriousness, there are few things more satisfying than a perfectly executed gadget play. The fact that Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich only dialed up 4 variations of them last season (throwback screen, flea flicker, end around, double pass) made this unexpected rabbit-out-of-the-hat even sweeter.

While it’s completely reasonable for fans to assume Yurcich’s thought process when deciding whether or not to dial up a halfback option (RB has the option to run or pass) late in the 3^rd Quarter of a nine-point game was, “You know what? Screw it,” this was actually a calculated and set-up play choice.

Let’s dissect the most fun PSU TD of the young season, shall we?

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There are a couple of ways to view Penn State’s 30-13 defeat of Illinois:

1. The Nittany Lions have, both gradually and suddenly, evolved into an Ohio State-Georgia-Michigan-What-Bama-Used-to-Be type of program, the sort that has enough talent and depth that it needs only to hold serve for the first half or even the first three quarters before inferior opponents, even those who have been playing smart and tough football, inevitably succumb to that talent.
2. Penn State has some major issues to sort out and was fortunate that the Illinois offense insisted on giving away the football.

The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, the contrast between this game and the last time the two teams met, that nine-overtime clusterbleep of a game in 2021, was stark. The talent gap between these teams, quite narrow two years ago, has widened considerably even when you consider the best player on the field was Illini defensive tackle Jer’Zhan Newton. The Nittany Lions totaled 383 yards of offense, which was 153 more than they mustered against this opponent two years ago. They were turnover-free for the third straight week while Illinois, was, um, slightly less protective of the football.

And yet, there were still moments where you wondered exactly how far Penn State has come: The offense’s first three drives, two of which began in plus territory thanks to the ballhawking defense, netted only six points. There was a 2^nd and 2 in the third quarter that became a punt. The wunderkind, Drew Allar, who had been borderline surgical through the first two weeks, did not look like the moment was too big for him but neither was he anywhere close to sharp, throwing behind or just out of the reach of several receivers, who didn’t help by dropping some imperfect but wholly catchable balls. His offensive line, which had been competent if not dominant in two games at home, struggled to get much push for its running backs and committed a few costly penalties, casting a longer and darker shadow over the idea that this would be the year the big fellas finally put it all together.

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• 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.

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