Answers and Solutions Continue to Elude Penn State’s Sputtering Ford Edsel Offense as Recurring Negative Trends Pile Up Saturday After Saturday 

FTB CHARTING – BOX SCORE

One play – the successful 2-point conversion to Keyvone Lee that reduced Iowa’s lead to 31-21 during the sliver-of-false-hope phase of Saturday’s depantsing  — gave us pause and made us ponder a Big Picture question:

How under James Franklin’s thumb is new OC Kirk Ciarrocca when it comes to play-calling and system installation?   

What triggered this question was a tweet from Saturday. Credit Matt Bortner of 1450 AM ESPN State College for eyeballing this reuse of a 2019 play call.

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Introduction

By now, I hope you know what we try to do here. We look at the stats of the latest Penn State football game loss from a statistical and contextual analysis and compare it to years gone-by. And now, with each passing week, the historic nature of this team is starting to add up for all the wrong reasons. 

Basic Statistics – Summary

In the basic stat table, we highlight the team that won each category and, week over week, Penn State has had something good to hang their hats on despite always failing in the most important row – the score. Whether it was winning the yardage battle or controlling the ball, there was something positive. Against Iowa, there was nothing that gives hope. Yes, Penn State had more passing yards than the Hawkeyes (280 to 186) and completed a slightly higher percentage of passes but this didn’t matter. After scoring on their 2nd possession to take their first lead since Indiana (which was game 1 in case you forgot) Iowa thoroughly dismantled the Lions and this game wasn’t close. Even after Clifford subbed in for an ineffective Will Levis and threw two touchdowns in two plays to cut the lead to 31–21 the game was never really in doubt. Any existing doubt about this week’s outcome was erased when Penn State chose to punt down by 13 with just over 3 minutes remaining. What also may have been erased with that punt was any faith that this team might have the skill, organization, will, and heart to gain anything positive from the 2020 season.

This week, rather than go through the detailed graphs, analytics, and statistical breakdowns, we’re going to focus on historic context. In honor of the first Penn State team to start 0-5 in the 134-year history of the program, let’s see how far we need to go back to find other points of futility in the storied history of this once gloried program. Here are the Top 10 shocking, depressing, and embarrassing stats of your (not my – I’m a Coastal Carolina fan now) 2020 Penn State Nittany Lions.

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Welcome to rock bottom. 

Or at least whatever rock bottom means until next week.

Penn State did what no other Penn State team had ever done on Saturday, falling to 0-5 on the season with a lopsided loss to a solid but unspectacular Iowa side and leaving little evidence that the first of those two numbers is likely to change anytime soon.

This isn’t a downward spiral for the Nittany Lions; it is a free fall. It can take years of work to build a program to the point where it can compete for conference championships and call itself one of the nation’s 10 best. James Franklin did that. And it can take only a matter of weeks to see that foothold he and his staff and his players had worked so hard to earn to fall away.

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FTB’s Rapid Reaction/Stream of Consciousness After Penn State Made History in the Worst Possible Way

• Penn State is 0-5 for the first time in the history of the football program, which began play in 1887. Here are some other things that happened in 1887:
  • Punxsutawney celebrates the first Groundhog Day.
  • Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show opens in London, England.
  • Construction of the Eiffel Tower begins in Paris, France.
  • Jim Thorpe is born.
  • Nikola Tesla begins experimenting with X-Rays.

• Hypothetical: Let’s say the devil suddenly appeared in your living room on Oct. 23rd and wanted to make a wager. The devil pays you $10,000 if Penn State has one or more wins before Thanksgiving. If they don’t, you have to chop one of your balls off. Raise your hand if you’d be down a testicle like me.

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Editor’s Note: Each Week During the Football Season Stand-Up Comedian and Co-Host of the Punch Drunk Sports Podcast, Jayson Thibault, picks games against the flips of a John F. Kennedy Half-Dollar. 

The Contestants

Jayson Thibault is a stand-up comedian and original member of the Punch Drunk Sports Podcast along with Air Shaffir and Sam Tripoli.  On Nov. 27, Thibault will be recording his new comedy album, “Covidiot” during his performance at The Market Lounge & Comedy Club in Valparaiso, Indiana.  FTB is without question THE No. 1 Penn State football site in Northwest Indiana, so far all our readers in the area (Brian) be sure to check him out! 

The JFK Half-Dollar Coin was first minted in 1964. This particular 50-cent piece we’re flipping has been in the cup holder of a 2015 Toyota Camry for some time and is a tad sticky. If it picks winners, we’re not going to wash it. If it doesn’t, we’re spending it.   

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Welcome to the New Age. Much Like the Old Age it Lacks Imagination, Often Seems Like it’s Draggin’, but Every Now and Then Becomes Radioactive.  

Man, 501 total yards! (Pops cork) 

After the Pppppppppppppppppppp]ppenn State offense posted its best statistical performance of 2020, is it any wonder why the entire FTB staff feels like cartoon Al Gore when Lisa Simpson bought a copy of his book, Sane Planning, Sensible Tomorrow. 

Lift the needle, move it back, and play it again, Al! 

THIS is what we signed up for. THIS is what we expected to see from the jump…well, except for the quarterback being different, the RBs being 3rd, 4th and 5th stringers, the true freshmen WRs outplaying all but one of the vets, and the reshuffled O-line…with Kirk Ciarrocca flipping the right switches from high above. 

Who knows, perhaps this week they’ll actually score some Pppppppppppppppppppp]ppoints, too! Dare to dream, people!

Sidenote: For those not in on the joke, here you go: 

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Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it. – Albert Camus

Introduction

Welcome back to The ABC’s of Penn State Football which is our weekly look at analytics, basic stats, and historic context of our favorite college football team. Maybe, just maybe, the worst of the season is behind us and there are glimmers of hope. Enjoy!

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Penn State made a position switch on Saturday that might not have saved the game but might have salvaged the season.

Or maybe the season was already beyond salvaging, and the switch only solved one of many, many problems while possibly creating another.

It is increasingly difficult to draw any firm conclusions about this Penn State team, which lost in a different fashion for the fourth straight week, other than that it’s not very good. The Nittany Lions have been consistently sloppy, but also shown flashes. They’ve been more than competitive when it comes to total yards accrued vs. yards allowed (501-298 on Saturday), a metric that doesn’t mean anything without context but usually speaks to general competency, and yet they continue to be insanely bad in the red zone, where they now have eight touchdowns in 19 visits.

The insertion of Will Levis at quarterback for Sean Clifford provided more of those scoring chances, and 20 of the team’s 23 points, as well as a vastly needed spark that seemed to permeate not only the rest of the offense but the rest of the team; the defense allowed only eight first downs and six points after Levis took over early in the second quarter. There was the powerful running style the 220-pound bruiser had shown last season, yes, but there was also a confidence and decisiveness in the pocket we had not seen from his predecessor this fall.

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