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Introduction

Raise your hand if you predicted back in August that this Saturday’s Penn State-Iowa tilt shoehorned inside Kinnick Stadium would feature a pair of Top 5 teams.

Put your hand down, liar.

Sure, Blue-and-White/Black-and-Gold LASIK patients might have envisioned early season success for their OWN team, but given the September gauntlet the Nittany Lions and Hawkeyes both faced it’s a minor miracle neither squad has a blemish in 2021. And so here we are, just a few days away from the biggest Big Ten game that didn’t include Ohio State since…since…man, IDK. The 2015 Big Ten Championship between Top 5 Iowa and Top 5 Michigan State?

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October 14, 2000: Prior to this Weekend, that Date Marked the Last Time Indiana Football was Shutout AND the Last Time Someone Actually Bought a ‘Zero’ Candy Bar – the RC Cola of Desserts

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Here we stand, a shepherd without a flock, a non-objectionable 16^th century European explorer (if there are any left) without a map, a yappy social media influencer without a WiFi signal holding an off-market energy drink that tastes like battery acid chased by the melted droplets found at the bottom of a Fla-Vor-Ice.

In other words, we are lost.

Twelve months ago, our unprofessional, unreliable and definitely unprofitable media empire arose from a firm foundation of snark and sarcasm fueled by the early-season ineptitude of Brent Pry’s 2020 Penn State defense. Missed tackles. Blown assignments. Communication issues. Lack of gap integrity. Jayson O-sacks-weh. Lamont Wade in coverage.

God, it was glorious…a bottomless reservoir of maladroitness (August 28^th on my Word of The Day desk calendar) that quenched our thirst to be a condescending jerk in print – an act that will never grow tiresome (cough).

But now…well, now there’s nothing to point and laugh at.

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Introduction

Another Monday morning, another tolerable trip into the office as we all ride the high of another Penn State victory – the Nittany Lions fifth this season and ninth in a row dating back to last season’s fake season. Against the Hoosiers, Penn State’s defense was its normal dominant self. Nuff said there. The offense, for really the first time in 2021, showed a pulse in the run game while the normally in-tune passing attack sputtered along as if a few hazard lights popped up on the dashboard. We’ll explore those trends and much more as we patiently wait for one of the biggest football weekends in many a year.

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Sometimes on the first tee, you’ll get paired up with a single, and after a few holes it’s still hard to get a read on whether he’s a player or not. He’s tall, fit, and has a nice-looking swing, but he seems to spend almost as much time in the woods as on the fairway. He’ll drop a 25-footer for birdie on one hole and then three-putt from 10 feet on the next. At the end of the round, you’re not sure if he shot 78 or 88, but either way you’re left feeling that it should have been lower.

Five games into the season, we pretty much know what the Penn State defense is — a swarming, confident, ball-hawking bunch that stacks three-and-outs like James Franklin stacks 1-0s in a tweet (five more on Saturday). The special teams have been solid if unspectacular, with the occasional field-goal block or Jordan Stout 50-yard bomb thrown in here and there.

The offense? Lots of birdies, even an eagle or two. But even with arguably the best receiver in college football on the field, this group can’t seem to string a full 18 holes — err, four quarters — together. The Nittany Lions’ 24-0 victory in Beaver Stadium was mostly a slog of bogeys interspersed with the usual Jahan Dotson SportsCenter highlights and some nifty footwork from Sean Clifford.

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 Judging From What Was Said Right After Penn State’s Never-In-Doubt 38-17 Rubber-Stamp Performance vs. Villanova, Good is Now the Enemy of Great as the Nittany Lions Offense Seeks Balance

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FTB CHARTING    BOX SCORE

Burned through all our leaf blower material already. Therefore, executive decision: Pithy intros are reserved for FBS opponents.

Let’s get to it.

Formations

The week-to-week evolution of Mike Yurcich’s offense sort of resembles that famous 1965 Rudolph Zallinger ‘March of Progress’ illustration, you know the one where the monkey gradually morphs into early man…but in reverse.

On Saturday, the same modern mind that flung the ball all over the field, challenged refs’ cardiorespiratory capacity with his Meep-Meep tempo, and reduced tough-guy defenders to nothing more than a bunch of injury-faking thespians four years ago at Oklahoma State lined up in what Wikipedia calls “the oldest formation in American football” – the T formation, invented in 1882 by Walter Camp and revived 50 years later thanks to a revolutionary, game-changing innovation…the introduction of the hand-to-hand center-quarterback snap.

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Introduction

To be honest, I’m writing this during the halftime of the Villanova game because the stats that we’re going to get out of this game don’t matter. Penn State is going to win. The defense has been awesome and will continue being awesome, Sean Clifford and Ta’Quan Roberson will throw for a couple more TDs (probably), and in all likelihood, the run game will keep spinning its tires. That’s where I want to focus today – the run game. In the first half of the Villanova game, the Nittany Lions averaged 1.1 YPC running the ball – well below their already-lackluster 3.8 YPC for the season. In the three games prior to Saturday, Penn State’s offense generated 68% of its total yards in the air. Against Villanova, 84% of Penn State’s 509 total yards came via the passing game. How does this bode for the team going forward? Has an FBS team had this uneven of pass/run ratio and been #elite?

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I’ve always hated the “If you take away these (insert number) big plays, the offense only has (insert more paltry number) total yards” trope. I understand that it is often used to point out a lack of consistency. But it also diminishes the execution and the value of those big plays. If 100 yards come in 10 plays of 10 or one play of 70 and nine plays that total 30 … it’s still 100 yards, right?

The goal Penn State’s offense sets each week, after all, is to pile up those chunk plays, as the Nittany Lions did in Saturday’s 38-17 win over Villanova. The hosts had four plays of more than 50 yards, which is what you would expect against an FCS opponent but also rarely ever happens because, well, damn.

So (close your eyes and hold your nose) take away those four plays (all of which would have gone for more yards had not it been for that pesky end zone), which accounted for 254 total yards, and Penn State had 255 total yards on its other 61 plays, with only 80 of those yards coming on the ground.

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