Well that was something else. Penn State showed up, opened the game with a strong scoring drive, played pretty good defense and still managed to stumble its way to an overtime loss. The Hoosiers weren’t exactly world beaters, but they made just enough plays to win it. They may not have been the better team on paper, but they made fewer mistakes and that so often is the difference in close games.
Nobody is going to write home about this performance but the good news for the Nittany Lions is that it’s already Sunday and Week 2 is already underway.
Here are the grades from Week 1.
Offense: C
This is a mess to try and unpack. On the one hand Penn State had the ball with a chance to just kneel out clock on its own terms, had nearly 500 yards of offense, scored 35 points and went 9-for-17 on third down. It was balanced on the field with over 200 yards rushing and passing and eight different players caught a pass while four different running backs had at least three carries. So by all rights Penn State should have won this game on more than a few occasions.
But the turnovers, which boiled down to two horrific interceptions by Sean Clifford, and a fumble/strip by Will Levis partially made this game what it turned into: a hot mess.
Clifford isn’t the entire offense, but he’s the engine behind it. The Nittany Lions will need more from him in the coming weeks to right the ship and will likely have to do it without Noah Cain and Journey Brown. Turnovers killed good looking drives, so on the one hand turnovers are bad, on the other hand, at least you had a good drive to kill.
To Clifford’s credit, he did manage over 100 yards rushing and had his fair share of solid passes, especially while on the move. In some respects he almost made up for his mistakes, but it wasn’t quite enough.
Penn State’s offensive line did pretty well considering the circumstances as the Nittany Lions averaged over three yards a carry with four different backs. Penn State also worked out to a 5.6 yards per play average.
This game was ugly, there’s no denying that, but considering Penn State doubled Indiana’s offensive output on the field, it’s not as though the parts that worked were totally awful.
Defense: B
Indiana really didn’t do anything all that well on Saturday night save *that* late game-tying drive. Michael Penix missed some open shots which would have hurt Penn State’s grade here but misses are misses. Hoosier weapon Whop Philyor was held to a modest 36 yards of offense and was largely not a factor despite scoring one touchdown. Penn State will be happy if it can manage an opponent’s best player like it did Philyor.
Indiana finished the game with 211 yards of offense and converted just four of 12 attempts on third down along the way. Whether or not Penn State should have gotten a stop at the end of the game is secondary to the fact it got a four-down stop previously that would have won the game had Penn State’s offense simply kneeled the ball. Shaka Toney made it seven sacks over the course of his career against Indiana, including two on back-to-back plays and nearly a third-straight.
When it’s all said and done this group wasn’t perfect, but as per usual, it was Penn State’s best unit from start to finish.
Special Teams: D
If you were going to pick a unit to struggle in Week 1, teams across the country have seen their special teams hit all sorts of bumps in the road. Penn State was no different and mistakes, penalties and muffed punts made this group the worst of the day. Jake Pinegar missed two field goals, which was unexpected. That last second first half field goal would have eventually swung the game, but instead sent the Nittany Lions to the locker room with another headache.
Jordan Stout was solid in his new punting role with three punts averaging just shy of 40 yards. Stout wasn’t going to be the next Blake Gillikin off the bat, Penn State just needs him sending the ball a long way down the field and he more or less did that. His best of the day was a 49-yard boomer. Stout missed the long 57-yard game-winner by inches but you can’t really fault a guy for kicking into the wind from almost 60-yards away and barely missing. That’s just life.
Aside from that Penn State’s return game was non existent, although Devyn Ford’s opening kickoff return was a broken tackle away from a touchdown.
This was a bad day for a usually reliable group and the grade reflects it. One would imagine this unit will sort itself out once it has more practice under its belt, so check back in two weeks and see if the struggles are still there.
Coaching: C-
It can sometime be difficult to parse what mistakes are coaching and which ones are just how games work out. In either case, Penn State doesn’t have to rely on Devyn Ford remembering not to score if it simply kneels the ball. James Franklin and his staff made an easy situation harder and more complex than it needed to. Kneel the ball and Penn State is walking away with a win, it really just comes down to that. Sean Clifford may have thrown bad passes and in theory you can call that prep, but a starting quarterback that goes 11-2 shouldn’t need to be reminded that floating the ball into traffic is a bad idea. He has played too much football for that to be a discovery in his second season of starting.
Penn State did good things on Saturday, and it lost for a lot of different reasons, but kneel the ball and none of it matters. This grade is average because it’s not as though Penn State showed up and got blown out or didn’t manage to make a comeback.
Overall: C-
Penn State just made too many mistakes, looked bad at times and lost at least in part due to a coaching error. The saving grace is in part that the Nittany Lions put up decent numbers and also *probably* won depending on how you fall with that whole review. There’s no question everything will have to get better, but it also seems unlike things will be this bad for long.
