Wednesday Column: Fast Start, Strong Finish, Soft Middle – Lions Advance Comfortably But Still Have A Ways To Go

Maybe it’s just not going to happen this season. Maybe Penn State is never going to play a complete 60-minute game.

But maybe, just maybe, these Nittany Lions won’t have to do that to complete their primary goal.

Penn State turned in another uneven performance in Tuesday’s Fiesta Bowl, but the best parts were better … and the other parts weren’t as bad, allowing the Lions to cruise to a mostly comfortable 31-14 win over Boise State and advance to the national semifinals.

In the middle two quarters, the Lions’ offense was hamstrung by penalties and mystifying third-down playcalling, and a defense that was missing Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Abdul Carter allowed the Boise State passing attack to move the ball up and down the field.

But the Broncos, who were well-rested after not having played in nearly four weeks, had some penalty (13 for 90 yards) and turnover (four) issues of their own and, despite out-gaining and out-possessing the Lions, could not capitalize where it counted — on the scoreboard.

And in the first and fourth quarters, the scary version of Penn State did all the work it needed to. Drew Allar capped two drives that were largely fueled by the running game with gorgeous touchdown passes, to Tyler Warren and Omari Evans, to push his team to an early 14-0 lead. And after a clutch third-down throw from Allar to Tre Wallace, Nick Singleton put the game away in the fourth with a 58-yard touchdown run, sending the Penn State rushing attack over 200 yards on the day; the Nittany Lions finished with 216, not including the 50-yard burst by Kaytron Allen that was wiped out by a holding penalty.

That was twice as many rushing yards than the Broncos and the nation’s leading rusher tallied on the evening. With or without Carter lining up all over the field, the Penn State defense was locked (T.F.) in against Ashton Jeanty, who broke his usual share of tackles only to find a second wave of Lions ready to bring him down, usually within a yard in either direction of the line of scrimmage. Yes, the Broncos moved the ball through the air, and the Lions benefited from a pair of missed field goals and a called-back touchdown, but Penn State forced them to play a style they had not relied on all year, and eventually the Maddux Madsen passes began to find their way into the hands of Nittany Lions instead.

Penn State, aside from a bad exchange between Allar and Singleton that led to a lost fumble, avoided the large-scale mistakes that can be so costly in games like this. Yes, there were some puzzling three-and-outs, and some too-cute-for-their-own-good calls when handoffs to Allen and Singleton would have done just fine, and a brainless personal foul penalty to keep the weekly bingo card full, but there were enough moments where the Lions were at their best—Omari Evans going vertical! Fatman stepping over ankle tackles! Dom DeLuca tossing Jeanty down in the backfield! Amin Vanover wrecking the game!—that you could see this team winning two more games, even if you had to squint a bit to do so while factoring in the possibility they might have to do it without Carter.

Penn State is playing clean ball, but it’s also playing confident ball right now, leaning into its strengths and learning to live with, if not completely clean up, its few remaining weaknesses. At this level of play, so much of the meat of the game depends on matchups, and the Lions continue to show that, on both offense and defense, they have the personnel, the know-how, and the discipline to execute and exploit different matchups in different ways. Their collective strength on both fronts has allowed them to dictate much of the early pace, and their veteran coordinators have allowed them to make necessary adjustments as the game goes on; few teams can do both.

Then again, the few teams that can are the few teams that are still alive in the playoff bracket, and the stakes and the level of competition will rise again when Penn State takes on Notre Dame or Georgia next week in Miami. This group has risen to meet both of its first two playoff challenges, though, without playing anything close to a complete game. You might be wondering if the SMU and Boise State teams they handled with relative ease were relative frauds. Instead, it’s time to start wondering if the team that keeps handling its business and making these double-digit win teams look like frauds is the real deal.