Sunday Column: Cardboard Opponent Doesn’t Obscure Penn State’s High Potential — Or The Work It Still Has Left To Reach It

Guarantee games are the worrrrrrrst.

But, everyone plays them, and until no one plays them, everyone will continue to play them. College football coaches take no prisoners and spare no expense to get a chance at a playoff berth/shot at a natty, and if that means putting a win on the schedule that barely qualifies as such, kinda like Penn State’s 63-7 pasting of FCS Delaware, consider it done.

While these games have seemingly little value for folks other than the true football sickos (hi, guys), 6-year-olds who are learning the game or the families of the third-teamers who actually get to see their sons play, they can be mildly instructive when it comes to A) gauging the overall health of the program by the respective quality levels of its depth chart and B) seeing how fundamentally prepared/mentally disciplined each of those levels are between the whistles.

By levels, of course, I mean The Starters, The Guys Who Could Start if Called Upon and The Other Guys. In most weeks, you’ll see only one of these groups on the field. If things go well, as they did against West Virginia, the second group gets a little PT. Against the likes of Delaware (and, cough, Youngstown State), if the third group isn’t out there by the fourth quarter it means things have gone horribly awry, the coach is looking to send a message, or some ugly combination of both. So with these (highly formal) terms defined, let’s take a look at how each level fared for the Nittany Lions on a muggy Saturday.

The starters handled their bidness. Take away the wince-inducing 66-yard run to daylight by Delaware’s Marcus Yarns in the first quarter, and the starting defense allowed 17 total yards on 23 plays. The offense, mixing in multiple combinations of offensive linemen and a few receivers for the injured-not-injured-oops-injured-again-nah-he’s-OK KeAndre Lambert Smith, did what Top 10 teams are supposed to do in these situations and ran the ball down the Hens’ collective throat to the tune of 315 yards and six ground scores. Drew Allar, last seen picking apart the Mountaineers’ secondary a big downfield strike at a time, was content to nibble his food this week, lobbing soft tosses underneath to the tight ends and running backs and being a game manager in the very best sense of the word. Without showing many exotic plays, the starting unit showed it is going to be a problem for defensive coordinators because of the combination of talent, personnel options, and run-pass balance.

The GWCSICU group entered early in the third quarter and Penn State didn’t experience much of a dropoff. Beau Pribula showed some wiggle and some pop as a ballcarrier. Dom DeLuca atoned for his earlier dropped interception with a pick six, and young bucks such as Tony Rojas and Elliott Washington showed some playmaking ability. What’s impressive about Penn State right now, though, is that the delineations between the first group and the second group, and between the second and third, are not super-defined. Rojas, a true freshman, by all accounts should qualify as an “Other Guy,” but he looks very much the part of someone who could take on an expanded role, as does fellow rookie King Mack. Vega Ioane, in for a banged-up JB Nelson at left guard, looked every bit a starter. Minnesota transfer Trey Potts, who is unlikely to see many touches this season unless Nick Singleton or Kaytron Allen eat some bad pregame sushi, looked like a player who could start for a number of FBS programs.

TL;DR—Penn State has a nice mix of top-end talent, capable depth, and enticing youngsters at just about every position on the field. That will serve it well for the remainder of this season and going forward. What it also showed on Saturday was that it is still not a finished product, which is both par for the early-season course and encouraging when you consider how brutally efficient the unfinished product has been through two weeks.

Most of it is correctable stuff—Allar still developing touch on the shortest tosses, D’von Ellies jumping offsides on punt coverage, the gap disaster that was Yarns’ touchdown, a miscommunication between Allar and a receiver, a few silly penalties. And some of it may already be on its way to being corrected. Penn State looked and played much more competently in the red zone on Saturday after scoring just three touchdowns on six visits inside the 25 the prior week. The tackling, as you would expect, was better. And yet, for all the dominance, you once again felt Penn State still has more to give in all three phases.

Now, when Penn State goes on the road for the first time next week against a wounded and arguably more dangerous for that reason Illinois, the Nittany Lions might look completely different. The relative youth could show up, and we might have to see how this team responds to adversity that wasn’t self-inflicted. But it’s more likely we get a performance more on par with what we saw the first two games. Because that’s the thing about depth—it works both ways. If the top guys do what they’re supposed to do against inferior opponents, the other guys get to eat. But if the younger guys push the older guys (or at least keep them honest) on the practice field, and the coaches are developing and preparing all three levels behind the scenes, you often wind up with a team that is good enough to, ahem, guarantee that its starters can take the fourth quarter off.