Penn State Football: Fourth Down Key to Upsets, but Hasn’t Swung in the Nittany Lions Favor as of Late

Fourth down is inherently dramatic. Convert, and your drive continues, fail and your opponent gets the ball, often with favorable field position. Games are won and lost on fourth down, nothing is more pivotal than the moments when possession could change. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the importance of fourth down in a big game, but converting them is often much easier said than done.

For Penn State, fourth down early in a game can also be a good indicator of what James Franklin thinks of his team’s chances, or rather how often he thinks the Nittany Lions might be able to recreate the opprotunties in front of them. The bad news, against Ohio State the Nittany Lions have gone for it on fourth down eight times in the last five games but have converted on fourth down just once – a Mile Sanders two-yard run that got just enough to move the sticks. As for the Buckeyes, they’ve gone for it on fourth down against Penn State a whopping 11 times the past five meetings while converting six of them.

As you can tell fourth down hasn’t been kind to Penn State against the Buckeyes even though the Nittany Lions have only needed to gain – on average – 7.6 yards on those fourth downs. That number would have been even lower if not for false start penalties that backed Penn State up 10 yards in 2019 from a fourth-and-two to a fourth-and-12.

Interestingly enough Penn State has gone for it twice in the first quarter against Ohio State since 2016 but never in the second quarter. All told half of Penn State’s fourth down attempts against Ohio State have come in the first three quarters while the other half have happened with inside five minutes to go in regulation, which makes sense in a series Penn State has found itself on the losing end of more often than not.

While 1-for-8 is a somewhat obvious weakness in this series historically, the Nittany Lions won’t find much help from this year’s Buckeye squad in that department either. So far this season Ohio State is a perfect 9-for-9 on fourth downs while holding opponents to a 3-for-11 clip. As for Penn State, the Nittany Lions have given up 11-of-19 opponent fourth down attempts while converting just 10 of their 17 own fourth down opportunities.

So in a game that could come down to fourth downs extending drives, Penn State will hope to avoid those situations for as long as possible if history -and the present – is to be any indication of how it might go.