Good morning from Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport!
How's everyone doing today? Good? Good.
I've got some time to kill before heading back home to State College, so this seems like the right time to touch on some of my thoughts from yesterday. So without further ado.
1) Tough one yesterday. No doubt about it.
Anytime the score reads 55-16, there's some rightful disappointment and discouragement. Certainly the sentiment at large suggests a disappointment on par with when OB's squad got rolled 63-14 out in Columbus a couple of years ago, but I would argue that yesterday's effort was much closer to being a game than that game, which was a 42-7 contest at the half.
So though I am not going to sit here and grade out levels of embarrassment, I think there's at least something minor to be said about the way this team kept fighting yesterday. After Carter's fumble, I would have dialed up the morgue and called it over, but the Hackenberg/Godwin touchdown at the end of the first half showed resolve. And I talked about it a little last night, but I really think that first third-down surrendered in the second half was a backbreaker for the defense. They were doing all they could - and I thought a fairly manageable job in the first half - but with no push up front it was just a dagger for them. So they give up that third-and-9 to Burbridge and Sparty just goes to work from there. That team smelled blood in the water and just pounced, which is what the No. 5 team in the country, on Senior Day, with a real shot at the playoff, is supposed to do. Credit where it's due.
2) Credit where it's due is not to suggest Michigan State did that on their own. No doubt, Penn State made critical mistakes yesterday.
And this is where I think a legitimate conversation needs to start taking place. The disclaimer here is that I am going to pound the drum of the realities of sanctions on this program until your ears bleed. I just can't look at this team this season and say with any reservation that long-reaching effects of sanctions didn't have an impact, especially once injuries piled up in key spots.
But, I think there is a two-sided tale that needs to be evaluated about the identity of this team this season.
On one hand, some of the freewheeling that defined the 2014 season - putting the entire offense on Hackenberg's back and letting him force low-percentage balls because offense wasn't going to come from anywhere else - was completely dialed back this year.
The turnover margin finished at +0.42 this season, which puts Penn State in the top third of FBS teams, as opposed to last year's -0.38, which put them at No. 95. Yet when I think back on some of the critical plays of this year, I'll be hard-pressed to not think immediately of the series of game-winning plays gone unrealized at Northwestern, the failings in the red zone to produce touchdowns, Thompkins' punt return fumble, and Carter's fumble yesterday.
This team actually surprised me at times. And though I know some on here will fail to acknowledge as much, Hackenberg made a boatload of superb plays this year, Godwin played his face off yesterday, and Barkley is electric. The reality though of a team that repeatedly hurt itself will make for some hard self-evaluation this offseason. It's one thing to lose to better, more plentiful talent. It's another to have developed an identity partly shaped by shooting oneself in the foot at critical moments. That's on players as well as coaches, and though I'm willing to acknowledge growing pains are to be expected, they're issues that need to be at least cleaned up incrementally moving forward.
3) I'm not going to wax poetic in this portion, but I think that the other side of this equation is and should have been obvious to anyone willing to pay a monthly or yearly fee to follow this program.
Which is to say, so much of what happened yesterday was plainly obvious before the game even started. So when it all came to fruition, the inability to acknowledge the how and why of those circumstances somewhat dumbfounds me - even while taking into account what fandom and passion to root for a team can do to sound judgment.
Michigan State has a solid defensive line. Penn State has a seriously lacking offensive line, with simply outmatched players - some of whom are banged up - playing out of position, basically just trying to survive, let alone thrive. That's a bad, bad matchup, and leads to things like consistent pressure on the quarterback, even when he doesn't go down on a sack.
The defensive line is obliterated, the linebackers are mostly all new, you have a true freshman corner getting picked on, a backup safety having to start... you name it. At one point midway through the game yesterday, Trevor Williams was the only upperclassman on the field for Penn State's defense. And those players had to take on a savvy, veteran quarterback with talented wideouts and, most important, all the time in the world to deliver. If Penn State makes him uncomfortable in the pocket with a healthy Nassib, Sickels, Zettel and Johnson, maybe it's at least a slightly different story yesterday (even if the results were unchanged). But without that element for the defense, which frankly has been its identity all season in hiding deficiencies on the back end, the Nittany Lions were cooked.
I'm just not sure what you do against that. Perfect execution, perfect play. Ballgame.
*****
So I'm going to leave it at that for now as I get set to board my flight. I checked out some of the broader conversation yesterday about this team and where it's going, and I frankly think it's still premature to deem this a fourth place program indefinitely.
I don't understand the sentiment itself projecting so far into the future as a general rule in life - that's a conversation for another time and place - but at least let's see some results with an actual full deck of cards before feeling the compulsion to start throwing dirt on a very much living, breathing program. Are they getting better everywhere? I have no qualms with the discussion of improvements made, not made, and absolutely necessary. But there isn't close to what I would call a broad enough data set to make some of the determinations my colleagues are feeling confident in making at this point.
All in due time.
How's everyone doing today? Good? Good.
I've got some time to kill before heading back home to State College, so this seems like the right time to touch on some of my thoughts from yesterday. So without further ado.
1) Tough one yesterday. No doubt about it.
Anytime the score reads 55-16, there's some rightful disappointment and discouragement. Certainly the sentiment at large suggests a disappointment on par with when OB's squad got rolled 63-14 out in Columbus a couple of years ago, but I would argue that yesterday's effort was much closer to being a game than that game, which was a 42-7 contest at the half.
So though I am not going to sit here and grade out levels of embarrassment, I think there's at least something minor to be said about the way this team kept fighting yesterday. After Carter's fumble, I would have dialed up the morgue and called it over, but the Hackenberg/Godwin touchdown at the end of the first half showed resolve. And I talked about it a little last night, but I really think that first third-down surrendered in the second half was a backbreaker for the defense. They were doing all they could - and I thought a fairly manageable job in the first half - but with no push up front it was just a dagger for them. So they give up that third-and-9 to Burbridge and Sparty just goes to work from there. That team smelled blood in the water and just pounced, which is what the No. 5 team in the country, on Senior Day, with a real shot at the playoff, is supposed to do. Credit where it's due.
2) Credit where it's due is not to suggest Michigan State did that on their own. No doubt, Penn State made critical mistakes yesterday.
And this is where I think a legitimate conversation needs to start taking place. The disclaimer here is that I am going to pound the drum of the realities of sanctions on this program until your ears bleed. I just can't look at this team this season and say with any reservation that long-reaching effects of sanctions didn't have an impact, especially once injuries piled up in key spots.
But, I think there is a two-sided tale that needs to be evaluated about the identity of this team this season.
On one hand, some of the freewheeling that defined the 2014 season - putting the entire offense on Hackenberg's back and letting him force low-percentage balls because offense wasn't going to come from anywhere else - was completely dialed back this year.
The turnover margin finished at +0.42 this season, which puts Penn State in the top third of FBS teams, as opposed to last year's -0.38, which put them at No. 95. Yet when I think back on some of the critical plays of this year, I'll be hard-pressed to not think immediately of the series of game-winning plays gone unrealized at Northwestern, the failings in the red zone to produce touchdowns, Thompkins' punt return fumble, and Carter's fumble yesterday.
This team actually surprised me at times. And though I know some on here will fail to acknowledge as much, Hackenberg made a boatload of superb plays this year, Godwin played his face off yesterday, and Barkley is electric. The reality though of a team that repeatedly hurt itself will make for some hard self-evaluation this offseason. It's one thing to lose to better, more plentiful talent. It's another to have developed an identity partly shaped by shooting oneself in the foot at critical moments. That's on players as well as coaches, and though I'm willing to acknowledge growing pains are to be expected, they're issues that need to be at least cleaned up incrementally moving forward.
3) I'm not going to wax poetic in this portion, but I think that the other side of this equation is and should have been obvious to anyone willing to pay a monthly or yearly fee to follow this program.
Which is to say, so much of what happened yesterday was plainly obvious before the game even started. So when it all came to fruition, the inability to acknowledge the how and why of those circumstances somewhat dumbfounds me - even while taking into account what fandom and passion to root for a team can do to sound judgment.
Michigan State has a solid defensive line. Penn State has a seriously lacking offensive line, with simply outmatched players - some of whom are banged up - playing out of position, basically just trying to survive, let alone thrive. That's a bad, bad matchup, and leads to things like consistent pressure on the quarterback, even when he doesn't go down on a sack.
The defensive line is obliterated, the linebackers are mostly all new, you have a true freshman corner getting picked on, a backup safety having to start... you name it. At one point midway through the game yesterday, Trevor Williams was the only upperclassman on the field for Penn State's defense. And those players had to take on a savvy, veteran quarterback with talented wideouts and, most important, all the time in the world to deliver. If Penn State makes him uncomfortable in the pocket with a healthy Nassib, Sickels, Zettel and Johnson, maybe it's at least a slightly different story yesterday (even if the results were unchanged). But without that element for the defense, which frankly has been its identity all season in hiding deficiencies on the back end, the Nittany Lions were cooked.
I'm just not sure what you do against that. Perfect execution, perfect play. Ballgame.
*****
So I'm going to leave it at that for now as I get set to board my flight. I checked out some of the broader conversation yesterday about this team and where it's going, and I frankly think it's still premature to deem this a fourth place program indefinitely.
I don't understand the sentiment itself projecting so far into the future as a general rule in life - that's a conversation for another time and place - but at least let's see some results with an actual full deck of cards before feeling the compulsion to start throwing dirt on a very much living, breathing program. Are they getting better everywhere? I have no qualms with the discussion of improvements made, not made, and absolutely necessary. But there isn't close to what I would call a broad enough data set to make some of the determinations my colleagues are feeling confident in making at this point.
All in due time.
