Penn State won on Saturday night to the tune of a 45-17 beating of Minnesota that helped put a bit more pep in the Nittany Lions’ step after an equally lopsided loss just seven days ago. It wasn’t all perfect at Beaver Stadium but it sure was much better than what the Nittany Lions had put on display the past few weeks. A win is a win and the grades are the grades.
Offense: A
Penn State ran the ball, passed it well and managed to create explosive plays. A bumpy start soured some fans to Sean Clifford early on but he ended the evening having gone 23-of-31 for 295 yards and four touchdowns. Clifford’s interception in the first quarter wasn’t his best thrown but Penn State can live with a bad throw over a bad decision from him. All things considered Clifford hit all of his targets when he really had to and his long touchdown pass to Parker Washington under pressure was a thing of beauty. Penn State got the tight ends back into the mix as all three of them totaled seven catches and two touchdowns on the evening.
Kaytron Allen had physical runs to the tune of 15 carries for 77-yards while Nicholas Singleton had 13 for 79-yards including a late-game, exclamation-point touchdown. Penn State finished the night with 479 yards of offense and managed 5-for-11 on third down, a mark better than many games this season. The Nittany Lions went a perfect 3-for-3 in the red zone and had receiving touchdowns from four different players. Parker Washington led the way with seven catches but the trio of tight ends in Theo Johnson, Tyler Warren and Brenton Strange were truly a sight for sore eyes all evening. Penn State scored touchdowns on six of the middle eight drives of the game, which really boosts this grade. Doesn’t matter who you’re playing, if you get the ball and almost always score a touchdown, you’re doing something right. Gaining just 14 yards on the first three drives left the crowd restless but that was soon put in the rearview mirror. Penn State can’t waste three drives against Ohio State, but the Nittany Lions weren’t playing the Buckeyes this weekend.
Defense: B+
A few bumps in the road here as Minnesota cranked out seven rushes of 10+ yards but it was really a solid bounce-back effort by a unit that was dominated last week against Michigan. You can also only blame Penn State’s defense so much when you consider Minnesota is a good rushing team in the first place. Penn State gave up just 340 yards of offense and held Minnesota to just two third down conversions all night on 13 attempts. Penn State had seven tackles for a loss and really gave Minnesota very little to work with in the passing game. The Gophers had a few big plays through the air in spite of this but otherwise the Gophers really could not sustain a consistent attack on the offensive side of the ball, especially in longer yardage situations. Not having longtime starter Tanner Morgan at quarterback certainly played into Penn State’s hand but you can’t argue with how this group executed. Curtis Jacobs led the way with 14 tackles while Abdul Carter picked up eight of his own in a resurgence from him. Penn State’s coverage unit broke up six more passes to add to their growing season total, an even more impressive number when you consider Minnesota only attempted 22 passes all night.
Penn State has to get better at tackling and gap discipline but if your starters really only give up one touchdown all game how unhappy can you reasonably be with that? Ohio State is going to put up a better fight than Minnesota but that doesn’t impact the grade. You can only beat who you’re playing right now. As an aside, Minnesota was held to fewer than 60 yards of offense in the first and third quarters. A weird stat: Minnesota only completed nine passes all game – not good – but averaged 19.4 yards per completion. A strange thing to digest if you’re Penn State.
Special Teams: C
All things considered this was a pretty unremarkable night for this group but a few things in the “not great” column stick out. Parker Washington made two different punt return catches about 10 times hard than he needed to and a muffed punt against Ohio State will end your afternoon before it starts. Other than that, a communication issue on Penn State’s first fourth down and a hands-team issue in the second half all seemed like preventable mistakes. The hands-team thing cost Penn State a timeout and those are often precious in the second half. Jake Pinegar has managed to go from “a problem” to “not a problem” and 41-yard field goal helped his cause, especially since Pinegar has a mixed bag of results from 40+ over the course of his career. Punter Barney Armor had a fairly pedestrian night by his standards but was never on the wrong end of things. This group didn’t do anything bad but it didn’t do much super sharp either. This grade is maybe harsher than it needs to be but also special teams doesn’t seem like it should be as hard as Penn State made it on Saturday. Credit to this group though for a partially blocked punt.
Coaching: A
A really well-called game by Mike Yurcich that saw more creativity, tight end usage and real thoughtful distribution of the ball all night long. Penn State could have maybe preserved more time at the end of the first half but in the long run it didn’t really matter. Penn State ended up winning by enough that coaching decisions didn’t mean all that much and the ones that needed to be made all went well. It’s probably unfair to say Penn State hadn’t been using its tight ends because it didn’t know that they were good, but getting them involved so heavily in the offense immediately paid dividends. Whether or not that’s a product of Minnesota’s pass rush being lighter or simply a change in approach is unclear, but nevertheless it’s always going to be a good day for Penn State if its tight ends are in the mix early and often. Full marks from just about everyone here in a bounce-back win.
Overall: A
Penn State had a bit of a bumpy start to the night but all things considered the defense looked as fans have come to expect it and Penn State’s offense took care of business in multidimensional ways. It’s hard to argue with a 45-17 win, especially when it was 45-10 at the last sighting of defensive starters. This was a bounce-back win the program needed no matter what next weekend against Ohio State holds. Convincing wins are hard to come by and Penn State will take them every single time they can get them. Extra marks here for fans showing up an hour early.
