Sunday Column: The Major Adversary Penn State Must Conquer is a Familiar One

One of the big storylines you’ll hear from TV talking heads or national media concerning Penn State in the coming weeks will be how the Nittany Lions will look to “bounce back” from a 4-5 season or are determined to “take the bad taste out of their mouths” after a 4-5 season, or … insert your well-worn cliché of choice here after a 4-5 season.

Though there is some truth to that – Penn State’s players and coaches are prideful guys, and much of the short-but-sour 2020 season was embarrassing, even if there weren’t many fans around to see it live – you have to wonder how much bouncing back this team will actually have to do this season.

Which is to say, Penn State had a bad record last season, but it wasn’t really a bad team. More like a decent-to-good team that just could not get out of its own way.

Only two Big Ten teams – Rutgers and Illinois – had more losses than Penn State last season. But both of those teams were, not surprisingly, at the bottom of the conference in total offense, total defense, and scoring.

Penn State, meanwhile, finished second in the league in total offense, behind only national runner-up Ohio State, and third in total defense, behind only Wisconsin and Iowa. For all the red-zone issues and turnover struggles they had (we’ll get to those in a moment), they were third in the league in scoring. The Nittany Lions out-gained their opponents by an average of more than 100 yards per game, and finished with more yards than their opponents in three of their five losses.

Penn State also was third in the conference in time of possession, enjoying a seven-minute advantage per game, averaged fewer penalty yards than any Big Ten team and led the nation in punt return yardage.

So … what happened?

You could point to injuries, which deprived the Nittany Lions of one of the best tight ends in program history for all but four games and made it so that the vast majority of their running back touches went to players who were third- or fourth-stringers, albeit very talented third- and fourth-stringers. You could acknowledge that they were running a new offense without getting to fully install it in the spring or the summer.

And yet in all their wins and most of their losses, the players Penn State had on the field were good enough to make even a truncated version of that offense work … until it didn’t.

The biggest issues for this team were turnovers and red-zone hairballs. The Nittany Lions had 17 turnovers, or one every 41.7 plays. Their opponents had nine, or one every 65 plays. Penn State’s offense visited the red zone 37 times, coming away with just 19 touchdowns and nine field goals; opponents had 18 touchdowns and seven field goals in 28 red-zone trips.

By and large, good teams protect the football and convert their scoring opportunities and bad teams don’t. But it’s rare that teams that show such regular proficiency in moving the ball endure such struggle with both, or that defenses who were usually solid at holding other offenses in check (Penn State allowed just 17.3 first downs per game in 2020) gave up so many touchdowns (Penn State surrendered 28; Northwestern, which allowed more yards per game, surrendered 13). It’s possible that the Nittany Lions could be just as Jekyll-and-Hyde again this fall, but not likely.

Heading into this season, Penn State appears to have multiple advantages beyond the hard-to-measure benefit of having 100,000-plus home fans back in the stadium. The Nittany Lions return the bulk of their starters and several key reserves on a roster that arguably has more talent than any other in the conference save one. They’ll have a souped-up offense led by one of the nation’s most accomplished coordinators and a beleaguered but talented quarterback entering his third year as a starter.

If they can click between the 20s the way they did last season and take advantage once they reach the 20 and protect the football better than they did then, those storylines could quickly shift from “bounce-back” to “springboard.” Using the pain and frustration of last season as motivation isn’t a bad thing for the Nittany Lions as they move forward. But they also might want to remember that their toughest opponents during a bewildering 2020 campaign were themselves.