Sunday Column: Ugly Truths Emerge for Penn State Well Before Overtime Madness Begins

It is tempting, oh so very tempting, to dive into the abyss of the overtime portion of Saturday’s game, and just splash around in the muck and the mire of the botched Boalsburg Special or the runs to nowhere or Brandon Peters’ throw into the stands. There is agony and ecstasy — OK, mostly agony — to be found there, and maybe even some pseudo-inspiring schtick about Penn State defenders who logged roughly 100 snaps (not an exaggeration) in a game in which they were favored by 24 points.

But the longest overtime stretch in college football history is not the story of the day. No, that particular tale is the story of a would-be contender who was finally, painfully, exposed as a fully flawed pretender.

Penn State showed us who it really was in Saturday’s ugly 20-18 loss to a previously 2-5 Illinois team. For most of this season, the Nittany Lions had the markings of a talented team that could rev it up from time to time and was just a few plays or a few days away from putting it all together. The loss at Iowa was maddening and disappointing, to be sure, but could also easily be explained away — the gap from QB1 to QB2 on this particular team was substantial, and QB1 had been doing enough damage before his injury that you could make the case that the Lions could just as easily been 6-0 and sitting at No. 2 in the country as they came out of the bye week.

Except that the team that took the field Saturday looked nothing like the No. 2 team, nor the No. 7 team, nor even the seventh-best team in the Big Ten. Overtime games usually only happen when teams are evenly matched, and multiple overtime games only happen when teams are evenly matched, evenly tired, or evenly dysfunctional. The most depressing part about Saturday’s game wasn’t the loss itself or that the game had even gone to overtime in the first place, it was the realization that the Nittany Lions were trading exhausted punches, Rocky and Drago style, with a team that had lost five of its first seven games, including one to Texas-San Antonio.

The signs all pointed to a sleepy start, of course. The Nittany Lions were coming off a bye week and a brutal loss the week before that. A game against their hated rival loomed the week after. Horrendous traffic made for a late-arriving crowd and the cold, wet conditions likely chased away a few other fans, to say nothing of their effect on an offense that relies on moving the ball via the pass.

The start, however, wasn’t the problem. Penn State led 10-0 with four minutes gone in the second quarter, and Illinois had turned the ball over on two of its first four possessions and punted on the other two. It didn’t seem like the Nittany Lions were going to roll, as they had early against Iowa, but it still felt like they were in control.

As the game wore on, however, a few things became alarmingly apparent. The first was that Illinois was winning up front, gashing a depleted Penn State defensive line with long run after long run and, as most teams had before them, shutting down what passes for the Nittany Lions’ running game. The second was that although Sean Clifford was in the lineup, it wasn’t the same Clifford that had played for Penn State this season. He showed tremendous toughness for being on the field at all, but he wasn’t his usual threat to run, held the ball too long and wasn’t consistently accurate with it.

His offensive teammates, who might have figured that all would be right with their starting QB back in the lineup, were no better. The uneven rhythm Penn State had shown all season — 75-yard touchdown drive here, two three-and-outs there — was replaced by a complete lack of rhythm, dropped passes, penalties, and the result was 227 total yards against an Illinois defense that had been allowing 428 yards per game. As for the 2-point conversion playcalling, well … like we said earlier, too tempting to go down that rabbit hole, but it is worth noting that Jahan Dotson’s number was called on … none of those plays.

The defense allowed only 10 points in regulation and came up with three takeaways, but those figures don’t describe the way an offensive line that Bret Bielema had repeatedly backed a bus over earlier in the week turned Penn State’s defense into pulp. Illinois had averaged 164 yards rushing through its first seven games. On Saturday, it totaled 357. Illini running backs picked up 5 yards even when they stumbled. Quarterback Art Sitkowski averaged nearly three yards per QB sneak, a play typically designed to cover two feet. Penn State sold out against the run and made a few stops late in the game, but had the benefit of knowing that Sitkowski (8-of-19 for 38 yards and one pick) presented no threat to beat them with his arm and STILL Illinois ground out yardage.

Maybe it is a small blessing that the exposure came this week, and not next week in Columbus, when a systematic beatdown at the hands of Ohio State would have somehow been more depressing if Penn State had been 6-1. But the Nittany Lions did nothing in front of a friendly crowd to show that next week will be anything but a beatdown in one of the nation’s toughest places to play, or that the rest of the season won’t look disturbingly like Saturday. The piper was going to be paid at some point, and that it was Bielema and a mostly sad-sack group of Illini that paid it casts Penn State’s season in a much different light and brings back many of the questions from last fall’s stunning 0-5 start.

Good teams — the kind that Penn State presented itself to be for nearly two months — can start sluggishly on noon kicks against inferior opposition, but eventually they right themselves and put those inferior teams away. That light never went on for the Nittany Lions, not in regulation nor any of the nine overtime periods. And even if they had somehow won that game, they would still be confronted with the knowledge that they’re a lot closer to the likes of Illinois than they are to the teams they’ll face the rest of the way.