Sunday Column: New Year, Same Sobering Results for Penn State

You’re never quite sure what to expect in a bowl game. A team and a coaching staff gets a month-plus to scout and gameplan and practice, sure, but that also means a month that the team is out of action. Players have time to recover from major and minor injuries, but they also have time to decide that maybe a bowl game isn’t in their best interest.

Sometimes a bowl game can be a pleasant surprise, a chance for redemption after a season that didn’t go quite as expected. Sometimes a team that has been consistently good will show up and look entirely discombobulated.

Sometimes, a team can show in only a few plays the recurring themes of the entire season, as was the case for Penn State late in the first half of Saturday’s deflating loss to Arkansas in the Outback Bowl.

The Nittany Lions had a 1^st-and-10 at the Razorbacks’ 33 with 1:38 left in the half after a 32-yard hookup between Sean Clifford and KeAndre Lambert-Smith. Clifford dropped back on the next play and spotted tight end Theo Johnson with only grass between him and the end zone, but the throw sailed over Johnson’s head. The second-down pass went to Tyler Warren and resulted in no gain. Penn State lost 5 yards on a third-down false start by redshirt freshman Olu Fashanu, who was making his first career start at left tackle, and Clifford, under duress, elected to scramble for 2 yards back to the 36 on 3^rd-and-15, with 53 seconds left.

Instead of giving Jordan Stout a try from 53 yards to extend his team’s lead to 13-7, Penn State chose to punt – or at least make Arkansas think it would before trying one of the more doomed fakes you’ll see, and the Razorbacks took over on downs.

In less than five minutes, Penn State went from a likely 17-7 halftime lead to a possible 13-7 halftime lead to a flat 10-7 halftime lead, and was lucky Arkansas made a similarly odd call that led to an interception by Ji’Ayir Brown on a double pass play with the Razorbacks essentially in field-goal territory.

The second half was a nauseating cocktail of backup defenders missing tackles and Clifford running for his life (we’ll explore this further in a minute), but that sequence just before half basically filled the BINGO card of themes that sunk the Nittany Lions during the six losses in eight games to close the season:

•  Clifford failing to connect with an open receiver

•  Lack of a threat of running game limiting the play calls

•  Untimely penalty

•  Poor pass protection

•  Questionable decision to fake the punt and a more questionable play design

Penn State had missed numerous tackles to this point in the game, too, and Clifford had already thrown the first of his two picks, but the Nittany Lions, even missing five starters who opted out and two more (Rasheed Walker and Tariq Castro-Fields) out with injuries, were in a good spot to beat a talented if not super-precise SEC opponent. And yet, as was the case so often against the better Big Ten teams on the schedule, Penn State did not take advantage of its opportunities early in the game (including a 50-yard field-goal try by Jake Pinegar that missed wide by 8 yards), which – especially when combined with all of its usual deficiencies – made for that much tougher sledding late in the game.

Talent-wise, the Nittany Lions had enough players left, opt-outs be damned, to make this game competitive or even win it. Parker Washington was magnificent, and Lambert-Smith found multiple opportunities to get past an Arkansas defense that played three high safeties but seemed to be able to cover no more than two receivers with them. Noah Cain and Keyvone Lee showed some rare explosiveness, and Curtis Jacobs (10 tackles), Smith Vilbert (three sacks) and Brown (six tackles and two picks) did enough to keep the depleted defense afloat for much of the game and provide at least a little optimism about the unit’s chances for the rest of 2022.

But the defense eventually wilted in the Florida humidity as quarterback KJ Jefferson, who looked like Daryll Clark and Tim Tebow strapped together, and hard-nosed running back Raheim Sanders pounded away. All told, Arkansas racked up 361 yards on the ground – even taking five sacks into account.

And still, Penn State might have won if – stop me if you’ve heard this before — its offense had been able to do anything after halftime. The Nittany Lions had 94 yards in the second half and spent only one of their four second-half possessions on the “good side” of their own 40-yard line.

Clifford was not the biggest problem for this offense in most of the first five losses (his absence from the Iowa game likely changed the result) and in a few cases, he played well enough – with, oh, just a bit of help from Jahan Dotson — to give his team chances to win that it might not have deserved.

That was not even close to the case in Tampa. He completed just 14 of 32 passes, showed the happy feet and inconsistent throwing mechanics that got him into trouble last season, and did not do enough with the occasions – and there were fewer in the second half – that his line gave him time. He picked up some key first downs with his feet during the 65-yard drive early in the fourth, only to waste those efforts with an interception into double coverage.

The Nittany Lions went to Christian Veilleux for the final series, hoping for the sort of spark the freshman provided against Rutgers, but his line did him no favors, either. Whether it’s either of those two quarterbacks or Drew Allar running the show next season, reinforcing, if not outright rebuilding, the line will be Job 1.

It won’t be the only job, though, and Penn State will still have work to do even if it’s able to solidify both the line and QB1. You never know exactly what you’re going to get in a bowl game, but the Nittany Lions, unfortunately, got a lot more of the same as 2021 flipped to 2022. A lot can change in the next eight months before Penn State plays its next game. Saturday reinforced that a lot will have to.