A day before Penn State and Oregon do battle at Beaver Stadium, ESPN analysts “Stanford” Steve Coughlin and Rece Davis met with the media on Old Main Lawn, where “College GameDay” will broadcast on Saturday morning.
Here’s what the duo had to say about Saturday’s matchup between the Nittany Lions and Ducks.
On the White Out:
Davis: “When you have the intensity and passion that Penn State fans have, and then you have something that others often imitate, but it’s not quite the same. There are great atmospheres everywhere. I’m not trying to come into Happy Valley and say this is the greatest, nowhere else is good. But there’s just something, it’s sort of eerie. It’s the way the lighting is in the stadium. It’s the look of the stadium on the outside. It was like one of those giant Erector Sets that you had as a kid, and the lights are up there. It’s just kind of old. It’s kind of an eerie feeling inside. Everybody’s wearing white and it’s loud and everybody sings along with everything. It’s just just one of the great environments in the sport.”
On Penn State quarterback Drew Allar:
Coughlin: “I don’t think he’s played the way he’s wanted to play. I also wonder, watching it, like there was not really an intermediate passing game in those three games. Are they holding stuff? Do they want to work on certain things? I know he wants to be better with deep-ball accuracy. You could just see it. The interception against Villanova is brutal. You don’t want to see that. I mean, that’s just rushing yourself into a turnover in the red zone where he could really put the game away. But I don’t think he’s going to dwell on that. I think it’s a fresh slate every time he takes the field, but I think he wants to be better than what he showed, and what better opportunity than tomorrow night?”
Davis: “Nobody’s numbers are better when you play the very best games, but his have taken a bit of a hit over the course of his career when they play elevated competition. But the good news is there’s no rule against improvement, and he’s got a great offensive coordinator who’s helping him. I think this is a real opportunity for him to shine on a stage like this. I don’t think he would be bothered mentally.”
On Oregon quarterback Dante Moore:
Coughlin: “No mistakes. To see a kid with not a lot of experience come in and like they haven’t missed a beat, they got two transfer tackles, a transfer running back that still has to score a touchdown, a freshman receiver. It’s been seamless and smooth and really, really impressive. So just to calculate what it’s looked like against that kind of competition to tomorrow night — that’s the great part of trying to forecast things, is how are they going to respond to a lot more resistance on a defensive line? But he’s been spectacular.”
Davis: “I don’t know that he is (ready). We won’t know until he gets out there and starts playing … He’s just got every attribute he could possibly want at quarterback and throws the ball beautifully, seems to have complete command of the offense … Oregon’s entire brand was built on flash, faster than the play clock, faster than everybody else. You know, fast, fast, fast, and yet now the guy that’s running it for them, potentially, the hallmark is patience. He realized he wasn’t ready. He went to a better spot for them. He sat behind (Dillon Gabriel), and now he looks like he’s ready.”
On Penn State’s defense:
Coughlin: “I expect Penn State’s defense to be a lot better, talking about the veteran leadership that came back. They came back for this reason, to play in these games like this. They knew this game was going to be here at the end of September, and you bring in a guy like Jim Knowles to win games like this, and I believe that’s the full expectation from Penn State.”
Davis: “It’s been good, but again, you don’t know until you get tested, right? I mean, they’ve certainly, the numbers have been good; they’ve been fine. But you’ll see when you’re faced with a big-time quarterback and you’re faced with playmakers on the other side.
