It’s easy to Nit-pick these Nittany Lions.
Through four games, they have fewer first downs, completed passes, offensive plays, yards per punt and minutes of possession than their opponents.
But you can’t deny that they’re 3-1.
Or that they have more points, sacks caused (true!), turnovers created (8 to 3), field goals made and red zone scores. And, most likely, more key injuries.
Most of all, though – and perhaps, most importantly – over the past three weeks these Nittany Lions have more grit. True grit. Nitt(an)y Gritty.
James Franklin said so.
“We grind through it,” Franklin said Saturday night. “We grind through it.”
After fighting off injuries, miscues, inexperience, big-money runs by San Diego State’s Rashaad Penny and a scant-and-scary 27-21 lead heading into the fourth quarter, Penn State’s players showed something to their second-year head coach. And themselves. They were’t gritty against Temple. But they are now.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re in with the 1’s or the 2’s or the 3’s,” said redshirt freshman linebacker Troy Reeder, who was a No. 3 last year, started this year as a No. 2 and is now a helluva No. 1 – and is tied with A.J. Johnson and Jason Cabinda as the team’s tackles leader, with 23. “When you’re in, you’re accountable.”
That accountability means that when you run 71 yards with a fumble recovery for a touchdown, you’re back on defense four minutes later, lined up and ready to hit someone. Just like Johnson did on Saturday.
“There was nothing like seeing A.J. get his touchdown. 71 yards. 330 pounds,” Franklin said. “The thing that was probably more impressive than that was the very next series we had to go right back on the field and he’s in there.”
That’s grit.
FIVE YEARS OF IT
Want more grit? Look at Penn State’s six fifth-year seniors, the only players in the program who have shared a practice field with Joe Paterno.
There’s Matt Zanellato, a receiver who never plays, eighth among eight equals. But always the last one to complain, too. It’s going 22 months since linebacker Ben Kline has played in game, hindered by injury after injury. But he’s practicing again, initially on the scout team. And while on the road to recovery, he’s in the running to be a Rhodes Scholar. Carl Nassib entered Penn State as a walk-on and never started a game of football. Ever. Until 22 days ago. Now, as a defensive end Nassib is the nation’s leader for sacks (1.75 per game) and ranks No. 3 in tackles for a loss (2.3 per game).
Tight end Kyle Carter is back, MIA after a freshman season that was followed by a season with a bad elbow injury and another season when he was simply elbowed out. Center Angelo Mangiro is a team captain and already has his degree in criminology, despite the X’s and O’s challenges that come with dyslexia. Then there’s Anthony Zettel. His dad passed away after a long illness on Friday, Zettel played on Saturday, then was home in Michigan for services on Sunday.
Grit. Zettel grit.
Then there’s the youth. And now there’s the injuries. And now’s there the injuries to the youth.
By the time Saturday’s game was over, the Nittany Lions didn’t have their top two running backs (Saquon Barkley, Akeel Lynch), their top two safeties (Jordan Lucas, Marcus Allen), their top linebacker (Nyeem Wartman-White, out for the year when he was hurt in the season-opener) and their top offensive lineman (Andrew Nelson, out for the past 10 quarters). Who knows what Penn State would be like with Kline or tight end Adam Breneman (remember his 3-78-1 TD stat line vs. Wisconsin in 2013)?
No one does. Over half the team was in high school back then. So they grit it out.
Franklin kind of stumbled onto his “grinder” line on Saturday, finding it a minute into his opening statement in his post-game presser. It resonated, you could tell. He said it twice. Then gave the aforementioned A.J. Example to drive it home.
The whole program has been gritty. The past four years haven’t been easy. No need to rehash it. But here are a couple things you may not know:
Only 24 of the 35 players who signed scholarships under Bill O’Brien in the Februarys of 2012 and ’13 remain. A few left early for the NFL and more than a few just left. That mans 68% remain. Not bad, but hardly a real broad foundation. Unless you count the grittiness of those who stayed.
And those that stayed, through the many changes and the sanctions and the changes in sanctions, have accorded themselves and their school well. Over the past four seasons, come hell and high water, Penn State has been blown out twice – by Ohio State (64-13 in 2013) and Michigan State (34-10 in 2014). In every other loss, the Nittany Lions were within at eight points or less at some point in the second half. That includes Indiana in 2013, Northwestern in 2014 and Temple in 2015.
These Nittany Lions never say die.
GRIT AND BEAR IT
For a team – nay, a program – that is continuing to search for an identity, that’s a pretty darn good one until something else that’s not #unrivaled comes along. Because this Penn State is not your father’s Penn State. His Penn State was the program that until the late 1990s was always – guaranteed by Joe himself — in the national championship hunt and/or undefeated at least one season in a player’s five-year career at Penn State. It was called The Cycle Theory.
Carter and Zettel and Nassib can’t pass down a legacy of big-time winning – since November 2011 they’ve lost 19 times and won just 26, with losing tallies of 4, 5 and 6 over the past three full seasons. But they do pass down a lot more.
Jordan Lucas showed it too when he wore No. 5, in honor of Wartman-White. Then Lucas showed it again on Saturday, when he wore it on the sidelines when he himself couldn’t play with an injury.
Christian Hackenberg’s on-the-field legacy may well be a ton of 300-yard games as a kid and a bunch of 100-yard games as a captain. But perhaps one of his biggest leave-behinds is that he never quit. He was sacked 10 times at The Linc, got up the last time, and never said a word about it.
That’s grit of the best kind. Grit don’t need no stankin’ hashtag.
Maybe Penn State’s success over the past three weeks – against less-than-stellar competition, to be sure – may be that whether it’s rain or injuries and the death of a loved one, the old guys have shown the young guys what their Penn State is all about.
And, not so remarkably, it’s probably your Penn State as well.
