Sunday Column: Aggressive Approach Benefits Lions in Win Worthy of Stage

This was big-boy football.

Auburn’s first visit to Beaver Stadium resulted in the sort of back-and-forth, big-swinging bout between two historical college football brutes that made you wonder what the hell it had taken so long to get these two teams together in the regular season. It was a game that came down to the final play but it felt like it would pretty much the whole night, didn’t it?

For all the spectacle the White Out games have delivered during the past two decades, the quality of football and the intrigue of the game script have only rarely matched the atmosphere. Both did on this night, even if the quality of the officiating left you pining for the orderly days of John O’Neill.

We learned a few things about the Nittany Lions during each of the first two weeks and a few more this week. Jahan Dotson applied a few more layers of cement to an already impressive legacy. Noah Cain was quietly brilliant. Joey Porter Jr. and Jaquan Brisker patrolled the secondary with the physicality of linebackers. Even the tight ends showed up! And Sean Clifford served up plenty of dimes and an extra helping of crow for his critics.

We also learned that the offensive line, um, isn’t quite there yet, and possibly might not get there this season. And that the defense will probably continue to bend even if it isn’t showing a tendency to break. This Penn State team is talented, to be sure, but it’s one that seems more built to outlast its toughest foes than to dominate them.

What helped the Nittany Lions outlast an athletic, tough, and similarly stubborn group of Auburn Tigers was a coaching staff that displayed an aggressiveness that hasn’t often been seen in the James Franklin era, particularly in the closing moments.

Mike Yurcich had Auburn counterpart Derek Mason off-balance for most of the evening, even while his line was allowing regular forays into the backfield by Auburn linemen. His call that resulted in Cain’s touchdown run was not only a thing of schematic beauty but, considering the four-plus yards his team still had to cover, gutsy from the standpoint that it was a run in the first place. If Penn State comes away with anything but a touchdown there, the game could very easily have had a different result, and that play gets added to a too-long list of missed opportunities rather than a served notice to Big Ten defensive coordinators that they have long nights in the film room ahead of them.

A few minutes later, Penn State got out of the shadow of its own goal posts by a deep shot from Clifford to Dotson that resulted in a pass interference call. Now, would Yurcich have preferred to kill the clock with a few Cain runs in that situation? No doubt, but that just wasn’t what was working for the offense Saturday. So he adjusted, as he did throughout the evening, and his team was the better for it.

Brent Pry, who has been more aggressive with sending pressure through the early part of the season than during the majority of his tenure as defensive coordinator, then shunned conventional wisdom and sent pressure on Bo Nix after the Tigers took control of the ball for a final-minute, desperation drive. Could Pry have afforded to be a little aggressive given Nix’s accuracy issues throughout the game? Certainly, but it was still nice to see, as was the confidence that continues to build on a defense that has grown up a lot since last October.

Not all of the aggression paid off, of course. Penn State failed to convert both of its fourth-down tries, including P.J. Mustipher’s impressive but ill-fated (or blown-dead-too-early?) push. Still, those calls from Franklin showed two things: recognition that this was not just another game and trust that his team could survive the potential — and eventual — misfires and still be OK.

Penn State is going to need its offensive execution continue to improve, as it did Saturday, and for its defense to continue to come up big in big spots, as it did Saturday, if it’s going to negotiate road dates at Iowa and Ohio State (and Michigan State?) and the home date against Michigan, but it’s also going to need an effective mix of sharp play-calling and fearlessness from its coaches to overcome the remaining limitations of its roster.

This one meant something to Franklin, who spent much of the week taking questions about his interest in the head job at another program but has, in just three short weeks, made last season more of a distant memory and put his current team into the national spotlight. The several dozen recruits in attendance were going to remember this wild night no matter what the final score was, but if they were paying attention to the way the home team won, White Outs that live up to the billing might become more the rule than the exception.