Penn State Football: Handing Out the Grades Following the Nittany Lions’ Loss to Illinois

As you probably know, Penn State lost to Illinois on Saturday in nine overtimes following one of the ugliest games a person might ever see. Not every game is pretty, but most games aren’t that ugly. And the Nittany Lions rarely post grades this bad, especially by a glass-half-full grader.

Nevertheless, here they are.

Offense: C-

It isn’t really Sean Clifford’s fault that he’s hurt. It’s also not his fault that being hurt limited his ability to run the ball and hampered his consistency throwing it. That being said, absolutely nobody stepped up to help his cause. Jahan Dotson had six catches for 69-yards and wins the obligatory “at least he tried to help” award on the day. Beyond that Penn State’s running game was once again missing in action and Penn State’s offensive line did little to nothing when it came to creating space to run. The Nittany Lion tight end duo of Brenton Strange and Theo Johnson were largely a non factor.

Penn State went 4-for-17 on third downs and gave up nine tackles for a loss. 227 yards of total offense is pretty abysmal for this group as well. All things considered the fact Clifford was hurt had a lot to do with how the Nittany Lions played, but nobody stepped up to give him any sort of help. That kills this grade. Penn State did average 8.7 yards per completion but Clifford’s 19-for-34 outing was far from his best, then again he spent half the game looking like he wanted to cry in pain.

The Nittany Lions also scored just three points off of three Illinois turnovers, albeit one of those missed chances was a missed field goal.

Defense: B+

Penn State gave up 38 passing yards and 357(!!!) yards on the ground. The rushing mark has only been bettered by a Penn State opponent on six other occasions with only one [Ohio State 408 yards in 2013] coming later than 1997.

That being said the Nittany Lions gave up just 10 points off of all those yards, forced three turnovers and gave up just two scores during the two-point conversion marathon. For all the things you can say about how badly Penn State’s offense was, it’s hard not to copy and paste those things for Illinois as well. The Illini could run the ball, but the pass was non existent and Illinois struggled to sustain drives despite racking up the yardage. Penn State lost, but this one wasn’t on the defense.

Arnold Ebiketie continues to play fantastic football for the Nittany Lions and racked up 10 tackles, 1.5 sacks and two tackles for a loss. Ji’Ayir Brown led the way with 13 tackles while Penn State’s secondary as a whole managed seven pass breakups. Penn State is now eighth in the nation in passes defended.

You can nitpick this group but they gave up 20 points. You’re going to win a lot of games in today’s era of football giving up 20 points. This grade takes a hit because of the rushing yardage and the fact Jaquan Brisker dropped the game-winning interception in overtime.

Penn State hasn’t given up more than 24 in its last 11 games.

Special Teams: C

Jordan Stout is a steady punter (four punts over 50 yards, and seven inside the 20). This much is established, but he seems to be good for one missed field goal at the worst possible moment. In the long run Stout’s miss did make a difference but it’s not the reason why the Nittany Lions lost. He also made three other kicks to account for nine of Penn State’s whopping 18 points so it’s not as though he wasn’t doing his fair share.

It’s also not really Jahan Dotson’s fault he hasn’t gotten a ton of good punts to return, but in a game that could have turned on a special teams play Penn State didn’t do itself any favors. The missed field goal hurts this grade, although to Stout’s credit he did make a 40-yarder after a false start by his own unit. That hurts and helps the grade, so a wash.

All in all this unit wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t exceptional.

Coaching: C-

This is such a pain in the ass to figure out. The argument to be made here is that backup Ta’Quan Roberson should have been ready to play if Clifford wasn’t ready to go. The other argument is that the offense should have been tailored to fit what Clifford was able to do. How much either of those things are true is up for debate, but it’s safe to say that the general plan on Saturday was “hoping that hoping was enough.”

Penn State can’t run the ball, it couldn’t really pass it and in the overtime periods it seemingly ran out of interesting plays and opted to just run the ball and pray a bit. Penn State probably wins this game if Clifford is healthy, but it didn’t have much of a plan for him not being healthy, at least that’s what it looked like.

End of the day Penn State lost a game that it shouldn’t have. That has to come back to coaching and recruiting and development – even if it’s hard to say exactly what variables Penn State’s coaching staff really had control over.

Overall: C-

Can’t run, can’t pass, can’t stop the run, can’t score from inside five yards. Didn’t win. It was ugly and nothing that is ugly gets higher than a C.