Sunday Column: Explosive Plays? Offense Experiences Full Implosion While Seeing Huge Opportunity Go To Waste

The final drive was the hardest to watch.

You could argue that any of the previous six second-half possessions by what passed for Penn State’s offense Saturday, which added up to — trigger warning — 36 yards in 25 plays, would have been the toughest to watch, as they collectively built on a string of ineptitude previously not seen from the 2023 team, and, really, not even any offense in the James Franklin Era, with the possible exception of the time Christian Hackenberg was sacked approximately 316 times in the loss at Temple in 2015.

But the final, pre-onside kick drive, when Drew Allar actually connected with a few receivers for decent gains, including the dart to Kaden Saunders on a broken play for the Lions’ only touchdown of the day, was more painful still, because it reminded you that Penn State wasn’t completely bereft of talent, as all of its other offensive possessions that day had so strongly suggested. It reminded you that Allar had, in fact, completed passes before and is likely to do so again, that his linemen provided him with some time to do so and his receivers were physically capable of hauling those passes in.

Someone who took a quick glance at the 20-12 final score without having watched the game might think this battle between undefeated, top-10 teams was a thriller. They would, of course, have been wrong. Someone who watched the game and likes to dwell on the “what ifs” would point out that things could have been much different had Kalen King not been (deservedly) flagged on the would-be Curtis Jacobs scoop-and-score, or that Daequan Hardy would have had much more impact on this game by simply fair catching the third-quarter punt around midfield, instead of letting it bounce for 20 yards behind him, than he had returning two kicks for scores in the blowout of UMass last week. They, too, would have been wrong.

Despite a wonderful effort from a defense that looked like it belonged on this stage (and maybe a few others) and mostly solid special teams play (that non-catch from Hardy aside), Penn State was never going to win this game against an Ohio State team that was tough but, on the whole and even with the best of a growing line of all-world wide receivers eating up catches and yards, the most beatable Buckeye team the Lions had seen in at least a decade. And it wasn’t because of a deficit in talent, as many of the other 16 losses over the last two decades had been. It was because a Penn State offense that wasn’t quite able to click against subpar competition through the first six games wasn’t able to do, well, just about anything against the Buckeye defense. It was a historic string of third-down futility (1-of-16, the worst by a ranked team in the last 10 years per ESPN), and on the rare occasions the Lions were able to put themselves in 3^rd-and-1 or 4^th-and-1, well, it might as well have been 4^th-and-30 … which they also had Saturday.

You could say it was a lack of experience and a greater lack of execution—accuracy, touch, even pre-snap reads—from Allar, who had completed less than a third of his pass attempts by the time Penn State started its all-but-meaningless scoring drive. You could say it was a case of former Buckeyes assistant Mike Yurcich badly losing his chess match with Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, as any adjustments the offensive staff made during the game seemed to make things progressively worse. You could say that the Nittany Lions, at least on that side of the ball, were not mentally or emotionally ready for the crowd/magnitude/pressure of this afternoon.

And any or all of those answers would be correct.

There was talk before this game, and there will be a lot of talk after it, and likely throughout the remainder of the season, about Penn State’s lack of explosive plays. But had the Nittany Lions made even the mundane plays that they’d made all season, moved the chains, picked up a couple of key first downs, played the field position game, and, oh what the hell, scored more than one touchdown Saturday, they would have made life far easier on their defense and given Marvin Harrison fewer opportunities to cross them into oblivion.

But they did not, and in the process showed themselves to a nervous crowd of Ohioans and the nation as a team not (at least at present) worthy of inclusion in a playoff game or even among the class of the Big Ten, regardless of how good the defense may be. It was the sort of defeat that casts a shadow over not only one of the most promising seasons of Franklin’s tenure but also over his entire body of work, which was already filled with road losses to top 10 programs but none that felt so there for the taking and, somehow at the same time, miles out of reach, as this one.

A chance to clip Michigan and throw a monkey wrench into the Big Ten and playoff races remains on the table, of course, but until that happens, and probably even after it does, every first down, every touchdown, every well-executed play the offense makes this season will have a bitter aftertaste, because they will all serve as reminders of the opportunity squandered in Columbus. This wasn’t the sort of loss that gets coaches fired, but it was the sort of loss that prevents a coach, and a program, from changing a narrative they had spent years working to change.

It was not, however, one of those losses where one or two plays made the difference, regardless of the final score. The Nittany Lions would be wise not to fool themselves into thinking otherwise.