Sunday Column: Lions’ Offense Still a Fixer-Upper, But There is a Way Forward

You would be hard-pressed to find better symbolism than KeAndre Lambert-Smith’s tightrope tap dance down the sideline late in Saturday’s 9-point Penn State defeat of Indiana in Beaver Stadium. Yes, the Lions’ top receiver reached the end zone for the decisive score after hauling in a rainbow from his young quarterback (more on that in a minute), but, on that play as in the rest of the afternoon, Penn State was walking a very thin line as it needed nearly 59 minutes to put away the Big Ten’s least threatening team.

In one sense, that wasn’t all that much of a surprise given how mentally flattening the Lions’ last game had been and the decided decline in quality of opponent. In another, more important sense, it was even less of a surprise given the state we saw the offense in last week. Unfortunately for Penn State, it was much of the same for much of the game this week.

The Nittany Lions’ first six possessions resulted in four punts, a missed field-goal attempt, and one touchdown. That’s the sort of production (as we saw last week) that is not going to get it done against the country’s top defenses, but this time it was against an Indiana unit that had entered the game allowing more points and yards against conference opposition than any Big Ten defense. Penn State did recover to score 17 points on its next three possessions, sandwiching two sustained touchdown drives around halftime and a field goal set up by a Jaylen Reed interception, but even that two-minute drill was unsatisfying, capped by a (correct) intentional grounding call against Drew Allar. Then came two more punts and Allar’s first pick of the season, which set up a game-tying field goal by Indiana and quickly turned the day from “classic sloppy hangover noon kick win” to “OMG is this actually going to be a loss … to Tom Allen?”

You know the rest. Allar’s 57-yard bomb to Lambert-Smith for six. Dani Dennis-Sutton’s sack of Brendan Sorsby and the subsequent safety after it seemed Penn State defenders had an estimated nine chances to score a touchdown. 1-0 accomplished. Perfect home streak against the Hoosiers intact. There is still (some) joy in Mudville. On to Maryland.

This was essentially a lose-lose game for James Franklin and his team. Anything less than an absolute pasting of the sad-sack Hoosiers — including the unlikely but apparently not-impossible chance of defeat — was going to be a field day for critics and fans tired of watching the Nittany Lions stumble on the biggest stages and, even in the event of the absolute pasting, there would be not-so-rhetorical queries of “Why couldn’t they do that last week?”

The best they were ever going to get out of this one, besides emerging injury-free, was to find some way to give this wacky, underachieving, Escalade-with-a-Taurus-engine of an offense some kind of a spark. And, despite more third-down miscues and the overall lack of rhythm that has defined the season, it found that spark.

And it wasn’t the pass to KLS.

The most puzzling thing about Penn State’s offensive struggles in Columbus wasn’t the 1-of-16 on third down or how out of sorts Allar looked (though both of those things were indeed mighty puzzling), but how little the Nittany Lions utilized what should be, and what had been to that point in the season, their two best offensive players — Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen. In 68 offensive plays last week, No. 10 and No. 13 received a combined 20 touches (18 total carries and one reception each), and 84 of the team’s paltry 240 total yards.

Contrast that with the beatdown of Iowa a few weeks earlier in Beaver Stadium, when Singleton and Allen combined for 43 touches and 133 total yards in 97 plays. Yes, the short fields and nifty end-zone catches by the tight ends helped in that one, but the point is that most of the offense flowed through its top two playmakers. On Saturday, Penn State went back to that well. Singleton and Allen touched the ball on 40 of the 74 offensive plays, producing a combined 131 yards on the ground and another 44 receiving. Now, is that elite per-touch production? No, but, well, nothing involving Penn State’s offense has been elite this season, and by the looks of it won’t be for a while. But the point is to keep giving those players opportunities for production. Maybe they’ll break that last tackle and hit the home run they keep searching for, or maybe they’ll have to be content to keep moving the chains.

The more the coaches put on the collective plates of Singleton and Allen, though, the less they’ll have to put on the plates of Allar and his still-inconsistent group of wide receivers. Yes, Penn State should continue to call shot plays, but it’s very, very hard to see those as sustainable at the moment. The Nittany Lions can’t wait for Allar to start making those throws on a consistent basis, nor for his line to provide him the chance to. What they can and should do is continue to feed their premium running backs the ball until defenses, even the ferocious (and possibly clairvoyant) Michigan unit they’ll host in a couple of weeks, are forced to put an extra man in the box and give the wideouts more one-on-one opportunities.

What we saw Saturday against a mediocre defense confirmed what we saw last week and, if we are being honest with ourselves, what we’ve known for most of this season — Penn State’s 2023 offense has not been, is not, and will not be elite. But it can, with continued assistance from its defense and special teams, be better than it was in Columbus. And getting it there can be just as simple as who gets the football.