He helped us a lot more. 4 td passes. 1 running 5 in total, 20-37, 287 yards. Yes a terrible pick but overall he came through huge in the clutch.
Football GAMEDAY THREAD: Penn State Football opens season vs. Purdue
- Thread starter anthonysiciliano_
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Dude Purdue could easily win 8-9 games. You make it seem like they are a bottom feeder team. On the road, first game of season, jacked crowd. Purdue has an NFL QB. We are not mediocre. Not a playoff team, did you think we were for this year? 10 wins is doable.
I may be In the minority but Clifford’s line reminds me of the saying about damn lies & statistics
he was awful tonight. (And yes, so where the WRs)
and ultimately I think a 5-7 season with Allar benefits the program more long term than 8-4/7-5 with Clifford
That is a God awful take. We ain't going 7-5. It was not a great game for him but my God he engineered the game winning drive.
What the he-double-toothpicks are you talking about??? Purdue won 9 games last year including their bowl game against Tennessee and returned virtually their entire 2-deep. They spanked Iowa at their place when Iowa was ranked #2 in the Country going into the game. Given that the game was played @Purdue it was a very good win, especially given the way PSU gritted it out (PSU's Defense held Purdue's Offense scoreless on their final 5 possessions of the game which is what gave PSU the opportunity to erase the lead that Cliff's insanely bad throw, and Pick-6, had given Purdue... and while the offense did not play great (Cliff was inaccurate and receivers dropped too many passes), they stuck at it, and gritted out a must have drive on their last possession.). Utter nonsense to say that was not a good win.
He did come through in the clutch and that means a lot! When that last drive started, Clifford faced a time that was going to define his season. It couldn't have been more dramatic. Yes, he threw a few inaccurate passes but he also made some big, clutch plays. He made some great throws as well and he was playing in a lot of pain. That final drive was a thing of beauty. 1-0 seems fine right now.
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A very good Ohio State team lost there to a much weaker Purdue team. It is a very good win. Learning yo win when you don't play your best is a very big step towards becoming a great program. Very excited that Allar is ready to play
First game of the season and first year starter at QB (ha ha, nvm), it was a good win no doubt. I think what other posters are afraid of though is that this was PSU at its best.
This from the guy that will turn on a PSU basketball game and start bashing the players and coach in the first 4 minutes when up by 10.
PSU escaped with a win, but there is not much good to come out of that game other than to note that the two FR RBs look promising, as does the Portal WR, and Joey Porter will be playing on Sundays next year.....and in one series, Allar showed some zip and some touch.
Aside from that, there needs to be significant improvement across the board. The OL is still poor. I'm not sure there was a single hole for a RB where it was supposed to be. The DL got nearly zero pressure. PSU was beaten, up front, on both sides of the ball in this game. The secondary, outside of Porter, got picked apart. Thank goodness Purdue kept throwing at him or it probably would have been a different outcome. The only question is how much gets put on the secondary and how much gets put on the DL for giving a competent QB too much time.
The vegas over/under is 8.5 wins. If there isn't improvement across the board, it sure looks like the unders will take it. Based on last night, there are 3-4 potential losses ahead of OSU against currently unranked teams. If PSU loses 2-3 of those, I hope Clifford plays his last game against OSU and then the keys get turned over to Allar for the final 4 games to start building for the future.
Let's hope there is significant improvement next week against Ohio and Auburn, but if not, let's hope Franklin doesn't play a lame duck Super-Super Sr QB the entire year.
Please show me one negative post in the last couple years that I posted about the basketball team. I was not a Chambers fan, but I felt after the year they would have made the tourney except for Covid that he earned a few more years. Then I knew his replacement was temporary, so I didn’t put much stock into that season….and I’m a big Coach Shrew supporter. And pretty much any negative posts I made were about the players doing something dumb because I’m a big believer that the players in all sports have something to do with winning and losing and it’s not all on the coaches….I know, novel concept.This from the guy that will turn on a PSU basketball game and start bashing the players and coach in the first 4 minutes when up by 10.
PSU escaped with a win, but there is not much good to come out of that game other than to note that the two FR RBs look promising, as does the Portal WR, and Joey Porter will be playing on Sundays next year.....and in one series, Allar showed some zip and some touch.
Aside from that, there needs to be significant improvement across the board. The OL is still poor. I'm not sure there was a single hole for a RB where it was supposed to be. The DL got nearly zero pressure. PSU was beaten, up front, on both sides of the ball in this game. The secondary, outside of Porter, got picked apart. Thank goodness Purdue kept throwing at him or it probably would have been a different outcome. The only question is how much gets put on the secondary and how much gets put on the DL for giving a competent QB too much time.
The vegas over/under is 8.5 wins. If there isn't improvement across the board, it sure looks like the unders will take it. Based on last night, there are 3-4 potential losses ahead of OSU against currently unranked teams. If PSU loses 2-3 of those, I hope Clifford plays his last game against OSU and then the keys get turned over to Allar for the final 4 games to start building for the future.
Let's hope there is significant improvement next week against Ohio and Auburn, but if not, let's hope Franklin doesn't play a lame duck Super-Super Sr QB the entire year.
He had a much better completion percentage and 4-1 TD to INT ratio. If he can stay healthy we'll be fine.
You don't get to have it both ways. Literally on a Tuesday morning you slammed people for negative comments on the Football coaches and then you made almost identical negative comments about the basketball team that same night, 4 minutes into the game, when up by double digits.
Either it's okay to criticize coaches, or it's not. Franklin is not above reproach. He is a good man, a great recruiter, and a magnificent politician, but he is not a very good football coach. Regarding your last sentence, I'm in complete agreement....and when you look at the supposed quality of PSU football players vs all B1G teams outside of OSU and UM, nobody gets less results from his players than Franklin. You can't disagree with that. JF gets outcoached almost every week by coaches making far less.
I don't know man. The Purdue lines aren't great and PSU got beat on both sides. the run game was bad, the DL got no pressure and Clifford was not consistency on accuracy and timing. If that persists, middle of the road teams are not guaranteed wins. This team could easily go 7-5.
I believe the negative comment you’re referring to was a statement that we’ve been up double digits early before and saw it slip away….not exactly a hugely negative comment on the players or the coaches, but whatever. And I do disagree with you that nobody gets less results from their players. I think it’s more like unrealistic expectations by some fans.
We did not get beat on both sides. The D got good stops when we needed it and we put up 5 TDs. Yeah we need to get more pressure and that will come.
What I saw that was different than last year is we have two backs who have great potential; tight end usage creates favorable mismatches; we showed we can make clutch plays in crunch time.
I also think the O line was a little better. Good pass protection but does need work on run blocking.
We can beat Auburn on the road. Do not see 5 losses.
Yep, and don't forget about the drops by KLS as well as I believe Warren. The first two drops that KLS had were balls that were right on the money from Clifford. The 3rd drop was low but either he has to make the catch bending down or he has to go down to the ground and make it.
Warren let a beautiful throw between two defenders go through his hands, team going left to right, and the throw towards the far sideline. It would have been a nice catch had he made it but the ball was put into a small window. I believe Warren dropped another ball over the middle that he tried to catch with his hands on top whereas he should have gotten them below the ball.
The point is that Clifford was very accurate other than the ball that got away from him and was returned for a TD. Had the offense tackled the returner the D might have held Purdue to a FG, with PSU retaining the lead 28-27.
Without half of the drops a couple additional PSU drives likely get extended and result in points, and PSU likely has an easier win. And Clifford's stats would have looked even better, something like 26-40 for 350+ yards.......
Things to work on this week in practice and vs Ohio:
- 4th, 5th, 6th WR's need to show up
- Shore up oline. If I was making the decisions I'd bench Wallace, move Tengwall to Right OT, and start Nourzad and Wormley at Guard. But I'm just hoping Franklin and Trautwein doe SOMETHING.
- Find MIA Johnson (TE), who might have a hard time getting snaps with the way Strange and Warren are playing.
- DB's played great - not too much to do with them other than calming down the after the play theatrics ... But they will have to react a little faster when they play against faster receivers that they can't make up ground against with the ball in the air.
- Find a place to play Carter at LB. Nothing against Elsdon and King, but I didn't see even 1 real thumping tackle by a LB and Carter looks like a tone setter from the glimpse we saw of him.
- Keep working with the young Dlinemen with their pass rush and some stunts to break free some DE's as well as the 3 technique DT's. I was looking for DDS to show something and he never seemed to put pressure on the QB in his limited snaps. Chop showed up and he looks like the leader of the DE's pass rush this season. Would be great to see a snap count for each of the DE's - never really noticed Smith-Vilbert playing.....Edit: Smith-Vilbert did not make the trip for unknown (to me) reason(s).
Anyone have a link to a player snap count from the game????
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our defense held Aiden O'Connell to 50 percent completions
he completed 71 percent of his passes last year
its hard to pressure someone who gets the ball out quickly like that but we did pretty well against him for the most part
he completed 71 percent of his passes last year
its hard to pressure someone who gets the ball out quickly like that but we did pretty well against him for the most part
All good comments. Warren dropped one from Allar that he should have caught. He was running right to left and Allar dropped it right in the window.
Back to Clifford. I am cautiously optimistic that he has made improvements over last season. He didn't run except once I think and that is a smart strategy. I did see him throw off his back foot a few times which never leads to anything good. Kind of like in golf when you don't follow through and slice it because you don't shift the weight off the back of your feet. Any way some technique/fundamental things.
I like your O-Line line up and getting Nourzad in with Tengwall and Wallace out. Did Tengwall get benched on Thurs? The key is to make whatever adjustments they are going to do now then stick with that. Stop fiddling with the lineup to the point that there is no consistency or continuity which creates issues.
I think this game is a good opportunity to do two things on offense:
1) Pound the rock! Really try to establish a big time running attack. Let's see if we can dominate Ohio's D-Line. I know, big deal, but remember we struggled to run against Nova and Ball State so IF we can run against a lesser opponent like Ohio then at least there is a data point on improvement. If Ohio stacks the box then take what they give you with play action. I am excited to see Singleton and Allen break a long one!
2) Get the future on the field. Get meaningful reps for Allar. Let's see him in action and this is a perfect game for that. That means we need to build a 20+ point lead that hopefully is not hard to do.
I agree that we need to see receivers 4 through whatever in action. I have been wondering about Liam Clifford. Is he in the mix at all?
On D we need to continue getting DDS reps. Good to get Carter back. I also hope that Mustipher is in the process of rounding into form and will be ready to go like last season by Oct.
As Diaz gets more experience I look for the D to get more aggressive. One key note is our D came through in the clutch in the 4th quarter, something that we did not consistently do under Pry. Hopefully a sign of the future.
Back to the offense, another positive outcome from the game was the use of the tight ends! That is a big strength of ours and we need to exploit the advantage we have there. We also need to get Theo Johnson back on the field to complete our 3 headed monster at that position. The TEs could be the weapon to do some damage against the likes of scUM and O$U.
Not exactly sure how PSU got outplayed on both sides of the ball when PSU averaged 5.5 YPP (Yards Per Play) , while Purdue averaged 5.25 YPP. PSU put up 5 Offensive TDs while Purdue only had 3 Offensive TDs.
Exactly they were not outplayed on both sides of the ball. This is a narrative that the negative Nellie's like to perpetuate along with the fact that Purdue is a bottom feeder team. They forget PSU was a 3.5 pt favorite not 20. But we were supposed to beat them by 20 plus points otherwise we are team going nowhere that is destined to lose 5 or more games. These assessments are ridiculous.
I really didn't notice how the Guards rotated in and out during the game. But Frank Thomas Carr said that he was disappointed with the play of Tengwall and that with Wormley playing very well during the Purdue game that Tengwall and Nourzad rotated at Left Guard and Wormley played the whole game at Right Guard. I'm basing my opinion that putting Tengwall at Right OT on his limited play at I believe Right OT last season and not on his performance vs Purdue....
He was highly rated out of HS. Hopefully he can play right tackle. Disappointed about him not playing well vs Purdue.
It's the one position that has been an annual disappointment in player development and reliability, despite the star-rating. So frustrating.
Sorry if already posted, but where was TE Theo Johnson?
Didn't play as far as I can tell; injury, illness, or actually behind both Strange and Warren?
Didn't play as far as I can tell; injury, illness, or actually behind both Strange and Warren?
I read somewhere that Johnson made the trip but was in street clothes. Injury or doghouse........
