Sunday Column: Defense Flexes Muscles While Offense Just Tries to Stay On Course

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.

It’s early October, a time when the nation’s best teams typically start to hit their stride. The Penn State defense, which admittedly took advantage of first a hobbled Michael Penix Jr. and then a fresh but ineffective Jack Tuttle, was in fine form in early September but took yet another step forward in this one, becoming the first team in 21 years to shut out Indiana and holding the Hoosiers to 260 yards on 58 plays. Nearly every pass attempt was challenged at both ends; defenders swarmed to the ball on runs and passes.

The offense started well enough, with Clifford making a gorgeous fourth-down throw to Parker Washington then rolling to his left and flicking a touch toss to Brenton Strange for a score to cap a 13-play, 80-yard march midway through the first. At least on paper, Penn State established the offensive balance that had eluded it in recent weeks, totaling 199 yards on the ground (on 41 attempts) in addition to 199 via the pass (on 34 attempts).

But instead of Dotson’s pair of touchdown catches or the 44-yard burst through the middle from Keyvone Lee, the enduring images of this one will be the Nittany Lions getting stuffed on two straight attempts from the 1-yard line in the fourth quarter. The scramble from Clifford that set up that first-and-goal was one more example of the offense giving itself a chance to make a statement, to show that it belonged on the same dominant level as the defense when the game was already in hand. And the ensuing turnover on downs was one more chance squandered, a 300-yard drive followed by a flubbed pitch.

Sure, you’ll take 24-point wins (when you were favored by 12) over a team that handed you one of the more maddening losses in recent memory a year ago. But that team had also allowed 31 or more points in three of its first four games and was missing several key players from the Big Ten’s worst scoring defense. And once again, many of the Nittany Lions’ offensive troubles seemed self-inflicted, from holding penalties to missed blocks to hesitant running backs.

The good news is that Penn State is winning despite the lack of consistency as other would-be contenders around the nation stumble; the bad news is that Stout is getting more work as a punter than as a kickoff specialist, and that the offense doesn’t seem any closer to developing that consistency than it was in the defensive rock fight in Madison to start the season. It must also be noted that the toughest tests still lie ahead, beginning with next week’s game against an Iowa team that isn’t likely to light up the scoreboard but has a penchant for taking advantage of opponents’ offensive mistakes.

Clifford left the field slowly after a tough hit from Micah McFadden and appeared to be shaken up. So too did Dotson the last time he took the field, limping just slightly after returning a fourth-quarter punt. Penn State didn’t need either to put the finishing touches on this one, but the thought of either player at less than 100 percent heading into Iowa City is somewhat terrifying given how little the offense has been able to produce without at least one of them handling the ball.

Yes, the offense still has time to figure things out, to find that thought or key that finally brings rhythm to the swing. But the fact that the Nittany Lions have had success with a variety of plays, only to not have that success on the next snap or the next series, and that the issues are never just one player or even one theme, suggests that the offensive inconsistency might be all too consistent, that the rhythm just simply isn’t there. And that’s the kind of thing that, regardless of talent, can affect every club in the bag — or send a promising season out-of-bounds.