Don’t call it a revenge game.
“The only people that I ever hear use those terms is, you know, when I get a question like this,” Penn State coach James Franklin said on Tuesday when asked about revenge games.
“We go back and watch our tape and learn from it and make corrections, but our entire focus and energy is on beating, Indiana, this Saturday, this season. And although previous records are interesting to look at against certain opponents and all these types of things but at the end of the day, all that really matters is you have to find a way to beat the team that you are playing this Saturday.”
It would probably be easy for Penn State to find itself caught up in the emotions of last year’s overtime loss to Indiana to open the season. It would be easy to think about Michael Penix’s outstretched arm barely reaching [or just coming short of] the pylon. The replay ruled in the Hoosiers’ favor, but it could have just as easily gone the Nittany Lions’ way.
Now does that mean the Beaver Stadium scoreboard doesn’t remind fans of what happened last year at some point before the game? Who’s to say, but the Nittany Lions are focused on the now, the nation’s No. 4 ranked team at 4-0 on the year heading into the thick of Big Ten play.
If anything the looming meeting with No. 5 ranked Iowa in Iowa City next weekend could pose a bigger distraction than what happened a year ago. Especially as Indiana sits at 2-2, perhaps not quite as threatening as it looked in 2020, although with Penix coming off his best game of the season so far.
So do you forget it entirely? Well, not exactly. Franklin has long put his team in situations during practice that mirror circumstances the Nittany Lions have faced in the past. Sometimes they’re situations that came out in Penn State’s favor; sometimes it’s a reminder of a loss that was, a four-minute offense that didn’t quite work out.
Or maybe not scoring in the game’s final minutes when all you needed was a first down.
“When we do our film breakdown we look at especially at this point of the year we’re still fairly early where you’re looking at the most recent games played and then do you also probably include our game last year,” Franklin said. “As long as most of the coordinators are the same. But for us we’re trying to beat Tom Allen and the Indiana football team for this season, and this season alone.”
Of course a lot of this messaging will come down to the leadership on the team as well. Enter defensive tackle PJ Mustipher who has been on the wrong side of a few emotional losses in his day. He’s also been on the right side of them as well, and knows they don’t happen because you spent all your energy dwelling on the past.
“We don’t believe in revenge games,” Mustipher said Tuesday. “We’re focused on this week. We can’t focus on last year because last year already happened. We can’t do anything about that. We can’t go back and change it. We’re focused on getting ready for this 2021 Indiana team.”
So no, don’t call it a revenge game.
