BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Sometimes it doesn’t have to be complicated: take two teams and the better one usually wins. That’s what happened on Saturday at Indiana’s Memorial Stadium, and Penn State left little doubt in anyone’s minds as to which team was better. It was an impressive effort on all fronts and the grades show exactly that. The Nittany Lions might not beat Ohio State or Michigan this year, but you’d be hard pressed to find much fault in Saturday’s performance.
Offense: A
Penn State did more or less whatever it wanted to on offense, ran over a bad rushing defense and never really struggled in this game once it got going. The Nittany Lions scored 17 points in the second quarter, went 7-for-16 on third down and racked up 483 yards of offense overall. Kaytron Allen was dominant with 86 yards rushing for three touchdowns and had two catches for 72 more yards. Sean Clifford was fine, going 15-for-23 with one tipped interception, while Drew Allar went 9-for-12 and recorded two touchdown passes. Nick Singleton also got to add his name to docket, managing 73 yards on 16 carries and a touchdown of his own.
Penn State finished the afternoon averaging 5.8 yards per play. Brenton Strange and Theo Johnson both continued their midseason contributions and Mitchell Tinsley added a few outstanding catches to his highlight reel as well. Penn State also went 6-for-7 in the red zone and went a perfect 2-for-2 on fourth down. All things considered, this was a strong performance start to finish. Some mistakes here or there but who really cares in a game like this. Extra credit to an offensive line that battled through injuries.
Defense: A
Indiana is not very good and Penn State made sure that everyone knew it. The Nittany Lions had a whopping 16 tackles for a loss which accounted for 25% of Indiana’s offensive snaps. That is not great if you’re a Hoosier. Penn State held Indiana to just 196 yards of offense and a 4-for-15 rate on third down. The Hoosiers turned the ball over three times and averaged just 1.9 yards per carry and just 3.1 yards per play.
Linebacker Kobe King led the way with eight tackles and 2.5 tackles for a loss while corner Joey Porter Jr. was avoided so much on Saturday that he recorded just one tackle. Penn State managed six sacks and got all six of them from different players. All told this was a shellacking and Penn State has had very few performances as dominating on this side of the ball in Big Ten play against a team not named Rutgers. You look for something that Indiana did well on offense and the best you can really do is one early 75-yard drive and the fact the Hoosiers occasionally gained yards. Outside of that 75-yard drive the game total is down to just 121 total yards of offense. Not ideal.
Special Teams: B+
Jake Pinegar has gotten a lot of flack this year and then proceeded to kick a 50-yard field goal right down the middle during a wind storm because of course. In a game with a ton of wind, special teams is basically just about not doing something stupid. Parker Washington lowers this grade simply because he fumbled the ball without being touched, which seems at least a bit like a dumb thing to do. Jokes aside, Penn State was fine here and Barney Amor did well enough (47.2 yard average) in the wind to avoid the “very bad windy game punt.” If you play a game in a hurricane and your special teams unit does almost entirely good things, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Coaching: A
Penn State could have come into this game sad and disinterested after last week’s loss to Ohio State but showed up and pretty much clobbered Indiana once it got going. Indiana is a bad rushing defense and Penn State took the Hoosiers up on that offer. Sometimes it doesn’t need to be much more complicated than that. This game got out of hand quick enough that coaching calls didn’t much matter, but credit to the staff for having a pretty simple game plan and having the horses to execute it. Drew Allar got plenty of reps, which always makes the masses happy.
Overall: A
The only reason this game wasn’t an A+ is because it took almost four hours to finish despite being done about halfway through. This is the kind of game Penn State could have slept walked through and instead the Nittany Lions showed up and did what they should do against a team like Indiana. Nobody is going to remember this game and if you’re a Penn State fan that’s a good sign.
