Football INSTANT REACTIONS: Penn State defeats Purdue, 35-31

[Richie O]

Drop your instant reactions below everyone!

More on Penn State Football's victory over Purdue

More from Penn State Football's season opening victory over Purdue on Thursday night.

pennstate.rivals.com

 

[Dylan Callaghan-Croley]

Drop your instant reactions below everyone! Penn State somehow pulls out a win in their season opener 35-31. I'll have a takeaways article after we finish recording an instant reaction pod!

 

[bison13]

Clifford sucked and then he didn’t

 

[heckmans]

Drop your instant reactions below everyone! Penn State somehow pulls out a win in their season opener 35-31. I'll have a takeaways article after we finish recording an instant reaction pod!

Joey Porter good
Work needed everywhere else

 

[Crusher1950]

They were fighters tonight I give them credit

 

[marshall23]

10 more years!

 

[AWS1022]

A win over a team many thought we would lose to…that’s always a good thing.

 

[NoBareFeet]

Manny Diaz. Lol

 

[marshall23]

A win over a team many thought we would lose to…that’s always a good thing.

Where is the Franklin hater who said we'd vanish 9/2?

 

[psulongago]

Drop your instant reactions below everyone!

View embedded media

Clifford for Heisman

 

[Hugh Laurie]

A lot of work needed on both sides of the ball. Still scratching my head on some of the play calling. Kicking game gets an A+

 

[NittanyChris]

 

[AWS1022]

Where is the Franklin hater who said we'd vanish 9/2?

Yes, we were supposed to not be here and he was going to be here telling us how right he was. It was Delcolion….wonder where he is.

 

[bison13]

PunterU

 

[LMTLION]

We’re #1. 🤪

 

[marshall23]

Yes, we were supposed to not be here and he was going to be here telling us how right he was. It was Delcolion….wonder where he is.

I think he may be back on his meds.

 

[Little J]

good to see a great effort to pull that one out. We were the better team the last 5 min of the game.

 

[Richie O]

 

[JB1979]

To many drops. Not enough QB pressure. Need more TE help. Never heard Theo Johnson name ??? But the defense stepped up when they had to !! Great road win. Great comeback. Road composure!!! I’ll take it

 

[Jerry]

These are the kind of games we often find ways to lose, but tonight we somehow found a way to win one of them, and it feels great! Rarely have emotions turned so drastically in the space of a few minutes. It was far from easy or perfect, and there'll be plenty of time for critiques, but for tonight, take the win and go to bed happy. Congrats to the players and coaches!

 

[AWS1022]

To many drops. Not enough QB pressure. Need more TE help. Never heard Theo Johnson name ??? But the defense stepped up when they had to !! Great road win. Great comeback. Road composure!!! I’ll take it

Johnson was injured.

 

[YYZ86]

Great finish by Clifford, but always has physical problems. Have to put Ohio down early and get lots of reps for DA.

 

[LMTLION]

These are the kind of games we often find ways to lose, but tonight we somehow found a way to win one of them, and it feels great! Rarely have emotions turned so drastically in the space of a few minutes. It was far from easy or perfect, and there'll be plenty of time for critiques, but for tonight, take the win and go to bed happy. Congrats to the players and coaches!

I agree to a point, but remember Wisconsin and Auburn? Great wins as well and then the season imploded. We have plenty of time to screw this up. Without a run game this is 6 or 7 win season.

 

[matt1017]

Clifford sucked and then he didn’t

This board sucked and then it didn’t.

 

[Obliviax]

1-0. On to Ohio!

 

[Maverick0]

Did not see a lot of pass rush pressure with just the front four. Always seemed like we had to have a blitzer to put any pressure on O'Connell.

C. Jones (#15) was fantastic (or was our pass defense scheme bad?). It was obvious by halftime that their only 2 receiving options were Jones and their TE (#87). Could we not have doubled Jones? Hard to do though when he is mainly running crossing patterns.

K. Lee does not have the quickness to get through the 1st line. There seemed to be a couple of times if he could have an extra burst, then maybe an extra few yards on a few carries.

Clifford...whats left to say that has not already? Still has bad mechanics. Had Tinsley wide open on that crossing pattern and overthrew him by 10 yards.

Horrible call on the Targeting call on Abdul Carter.

 

[marshall23]

This board sucked and then it didn’t.

Give it time.....the couch coaches never sleep.

 

[FLMike]

We didn’t quit. That’s a good start. Terrible call on Carter.

 

[lazydave841]

Tinsley. #1 WR. Hopefully we game plan him Dotson's targets in addition to the #.

Kudos to KLS. His TD was a big moment for a guy who had 3 drops at that point. Didn't drop another.

RBs played better than last year. Nobody broke a big run, but everyone kept going forward and they all blocked well.

Special teams had no affective drop off. Kickoffs were deep enough for TBs or high enough for coverage. 47 yards per punt was excellent. 3 downed in the 20, would have been 4.

Defense held Aiden to 50.8% and 1 TD. That's way below his averages. Really missed Brisker and Brooks tonight, but we survived an older, more experienced team with a tricky offense. Diaz called some key plays late (Dixon blitz, tighter coverages when they were running out of time).

Allar looked 1000x better tonight compared to spring. You can see why he's #2.

 

[CJFisJoePaII]

Tinsley. #1 WR. Hopefully we game plan him Dotson's targets in addition to the #.

Kudos to KLS. His TD was a big moment for a guy who had 3 drops at that point. Didn't drop another.

RBs played better than last year. Nobody broke a big run, but everyone kept going forward and they all blocked well.

Special teams had no affective drop off. Kickoffs were deep enough for TBs or high enough for coverage. 47 yards per punt was excellent. 3 downed in the 20, would have been 4.

Defense held Aiden to 50.8% and 1 TD. That's way below his averages. Really missed Brisker and Brooks tonight, but we survived an older, more experienced team with a tricky offense. Diaz called some key plays late (Dixon blitz, tighter coverages when they were running out of time).

Allar looked 1000x better tonight compared to spring. You can see why he's #2.

The D held Purdue scoreless on their last 5 possessions, which was humungous especially after Cliff's pick-6 - it was this "true grit" of the defense when we needed it most that preserved our "chance" to win it imho. Yes, the Offense and Cliff came through in the clutch, but we don't have the opportunity without the defense shutting out Purdue in 4th Qtr on all 5 of their possessions.

 

[jmorovich]

Franklin and staff still refuse to settle on one RB and let him get into a rhythm

 

[johnmpsu]

Defense finally showed up in the 4th quarter. Hope for the future???

Clifford showed up when he had to. Good for him.

Punting was a happy surprise.

Hopefully they improve.

 

[Richie O]

 

[berklion]

Pretty good opening game on the road. didn't hurt themselves too bad. 1 really bad pass almost broke their back. A few bad penalties in the D backfield. Left a bunch of young kids feel the speed of the game and turned it up when they had to. Good game

 

[marshall23]

Wondering if scoring TDs in the final seconds of both halves, with timeouts preserved, qualifies as good clock management?

 

[sdillman3030]

To many drops. Not enough QB pressure. Need more TE help. Never heard Theo Johnson name ??? But the defense stepped up when they had to !! Great road win. Great comeback. Road composure!!! I’ll take it

Terrible interception aside, I thought there were definitely more drops than bad throws by Clifford. Many of those drops were on chunk plays too.

 

[junior1]

Drop your instant reactions below everyone! Penn State somehow pulls out a win in their season opener 35-31. I'll have a takeaways article after we finish recording an instant reaction pod!

what I think is a rational opinion....
defense....I said earlier that if we played our soft zone defense O'connell would kill us...that it's difficult to get sacks because they get the ball out quickly,..and that they'll use those short crosses to set up the long ball....
all of those happened. In about the last 10 minutes it seemed as if we switched to a more aggressive defense both rushing the passer and going more man to man. I thought our dbacks played great in the final purdue drives, and Urban Meyer was right when he said the defense won this game.
Offense..I don't understand the game plan...too many runs up the middle on 1 and 2 downs then on 3rd and 6 or 7 pass. When we were passing, we were moving the ball...last drive one run and moved down the field in about a minute with passes. Our offense doesn't seem to have an identity. On offensive plays, defense has 10 defenders in the box and we try to run. I guess there's a plan, but the objective is to win the game..if the pass is working pass until they can stop you.
On to Ohio.

 

[Obliviax]

Terrible interception aside, I thought there were definitely more drops than bad throws by Clifford. Many of those drops were on chunk plays too.

Aside from the gut feel that SC didn't play well, he had a 148 QB rating. Their QB has a 105. I agree, if you take away the INT (and we dropped two or three), SC had a nice game. I counted at least four drops (one was Allar, who looked pretty damn good).

 

[bcspsu]

Defense finally showed up in the 4th quarter. Hope for the future???

Clifford showed up when he had to. Good for him.

Punting was a happy surprise.

Hopefully they improve.

IMO, the punter was the player of the game along with Porter for his play in the second half, because I thought that his first half was below average. Purdue's game plan of continuing to pass with under six minutes to go also was a player of the game for PSU; that just was bad coaching, but that's what most of college football has become.

Purdue threw 58 passes, and neither team rushed for more than 100 yards. I heard last night on the pregame show that PSU hasn't had a 100 yard rusher in, I believe, 16 and now 17 consecutive games, which is the longest streak since back in the 1960s. How can you have a good rushing game if your game plan basically doesn't include one?

 

[Online Persona]

Felt really good for Clifford that last drive to vindicate himself. He went from single handedly throwing the game away to being the hero. In reality he was just good enough to win on the road against a very experienced team that threw everything they had at us. Serious ups and downs but kept after it and came out on top. Allar looked good in his series and glad he did get one. Hopefully he gets a lot of work next week because the game is in hand early.

Defensive and offensive lines were overhyped in camp. Perhaps the potential is there but they were only adequate against Purdue. I suspect that our line play continues to improve and Purdue had most of theirs back from a 9 win team and it showed. There is certainly potential on both lines and maybe it just isn't coming all together in game 1 particularly with a lot of guys returning from injuries or new.

Skill positions also have potential and plenty of talent but missed way too many catchable balls and did not have space all night. WRs and TEs weren't really that open and rbs never had a big opportunity to break one. Maybe we just never had a block to the 2nd level. Purdue played alot of guys in the box and we just weren't all that creative to burn them consistently.

Our pass defense played too soft for much of the night letting Purdue receivers run free. Then we did finally tighten it up in the 4th. We held them below their averages but made that Jones kid look pretty darn good. We are deep and did have plays made by a number of dbs. Dropped a few ints though. Porter's recovery on the sideline was a perfect rep of a drill they had worked on in camp.

LB is scary thin and when Jacobs went down after losing Carter early on a BS targeting, I thought we were in real trouble already game 1. Fortunately Jacobs returned. But this area is going to be scary all year unless some young guys can step up and they all stay healthy.

Punting was great! Even with that punt team screw up, Amor was a weapon. Kickoffs were pretty good too. There is potential in our return game and our cover guys were on top of and shut down their returners all night which was supposed to be a strength for them.

Coaching was good enough to win. We really held back the aggressiveness on d for almost too long and the run game was unimaginable or maybe just not diverse just yet. I'd actually characterize the entire offensive game plan as not real diverse or imaginative. But it's game 1 and they are running with a lot of new players so maybe they didn't want to put too much on them yet. Hopefully the playcalling expands and gets guys in space a little more as the season progresses.