It had been a long time coming.
In fact it has almost been a year since Noah Cain went down with an injury that kept him out of Penn State’s 2020 season save for a few snaps against Indiana.
So Cain, already living through an uncertain time during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, had to consider an uncertain future on and off the field.
And while COVID-19 may not have fully escaped anyone’s life just yet, a year later there are fans in the stands and a Noah Cain on the field. Something normal, but on both fronts, something that took a lot of work.
“I wasn’t even able to travel last year so it was really just, you know, sitting back, not being able to be around your team, not being able to go through that grind with your teammates,” Cain said of the hardest part about being injured. “This whole programs they just helped me come back from my injury last October, I just had a great group of guys and a great group of coaches and the staff are surrounding me just keep my head up keep my spirits up so they definitely played a big role.”
If Cain was looking for a confidence boost early it didn’t come. The first snap of the game saw Cain lose a yard as Penn State struggled to move the ball on the ground and through the air on the first half. For a good long while the Nittany Lions boasted negative rushing yards and an otherwise vaunted running backs room looked far from elite behind a struggling offensive line.
But then with 13:31 to go in the game when Penn State absolutely needed it, Cain broke to his right, through a crease and 34-yards later Penn State had its longest run of the day. Cain would carry the ball five more times in the game’s final quarter, one of which would give Penn State a two-yard touchdown. On top of that Cain would add three more receptions to his five catch total, pulling down receptions of 13, 16 and one yard. His longest catches coming on second and third down.
“This is a really good [Wisconsin] defense,”coach James Franklin said after the game. “They’ve been top five in defense the last couple years. Their linebackers were super aggressive and downhill, which made it hard to stay on double teams; to get movement. And then we didn’t get off on the downhill linebackers a couple of times as well.”
“He just has a way to slip arm tackles, to get positive yards,” Franklin added. “Some of those plays late in the game on the sideline, in the passing game and in the running game, where he broke the tackle and got extra yards were huge for us. That’ll be something to build on.”
The difference between the first half and the second? For both Cain and his offensive counterparts the answer was simple; slowing things down between the ears.
“I definitely helped my confidence today,” Cain said. “In the first half, like I was just in my head too much. When we just got into halftime coaches told us to trust our training that just helped us out a lot to come out on top.”
Confidence is a key phrase for both Cain and Penn State coming out of Saturday’s win. The Nittany Lions know the road ahead won’t be easy, but it won’t always be as difficult as opening the season on the road against Top 15 team with one of the better defenses in the nation.
And there are worse things than winning one of the toughest games of the year.
