Penn State football bounces back with a 34-27 win over Indiana
Penn State’s dreams of making the College Football Playoff remain intact.
The Nittany Lions held on to beat Indiana 34-27 Saturday at Beaver Stadium, meaning a win over Ohio State next Saturday will still vault James Franklin’s squad into first place in the Big Ten East.
But a win over the Hoosiers wasn’t always a certainty Saturday.
Indiana cut the deficit to 27-24 in the final quarter, but Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford responded with an 18-play, 75-yard TD drive that ate up 9:01 of clock and gave the Nittany Lions a double-digit lead. That all but ended the game.
Journey Brown also ran for his second straight 100-yard game, finishing with 21 carries for exactly 100 yards.
With the win, No. 9 Penn State improves to 9-1. The Hoosiers fall to 7-3.
Player of the game
Penn State QB Sean Clifford: It wasn’t his best game to date, but Clifford did exactly what he needed to when called upon.
When Indiana tied the game in the first quarter, Clifford drove his team 75 yards for a field goal. When the Hoosiers again seized the lead in the opening stanza, Clifford sprinted for a 38-yard touchdown run to reclaim the 17-14 edge. And, when Indiana scored to cut the deficit to 27-24 in the final quarter, Clifford helped milk the clock on an 18-play, 75-yard drive that consumed more than 9 minutes of clock.
Clifford finished 11-of-23 passing for 179 yards and a touchdown. On the ground, he also had 55 yards and two scores.
Play of the game
Penn State QB Sean Clifford’s 38-yard touchdown run: Clifford was seen flexing his leg early in the game, and there was some question as to whether last week’s late limp vs. Minnesota carried into this week. But Clifford quickly shook away any discomfort.
Let’s set up the play here: With a little more than one minute left in the first quarter, the Nittany Lions were facing first-and-10 from the Indiana 38-yard line. Clifford dropped back to pass, saw a lot of green in front of him and then took off running.
Indiana didn’t appear to expect Clifford’s speed. The redshirt sophomore caught one linebacker flat-footed and wasn’t really challenged until he got inside the 10. At that point, true freshman running back Devyn Ford walled off Indiana DB Juwan Burgess and wideout Mac Hippenhammer blocked DB Bryant Fitzgerald to prevent any tackles. Clifford scored the 38-yard touchdown run to give the Nittany Lions an early 17-14 lead.
Turning point
Indiana’s laughably bad ‘fake’ punt and Penn State’s response: This one is going to be replayed for all the wrong reasons. On the first possession of the second half, Indiana found itself in a fourth-and-1 situation on its own 44-yard line. It opted to go for it, then called a timeout — and then sent the punt team out on the field.
What followed was one of the season’s worst special-teams plays. The main reason? IU head coach Tom Allen said afterward the true freshman long-snapper made a mistake; he was supposed to get it back to the punter.
Instead, he snapped it to the unsuspecting up-back, who bobbled it and was quickly tackled for a 4-yard loss. “It was unfortunate,” Allen said. “Pretty costly for sure.”
Two plays later, Penn State running back Journey Brown sprinted up the middle for a 35-yard touchdown run. The Nittany Lions led 27-14 at that point, with 10:24 left in the third quarter. Indiana could never regain the momentum lost from that series of plays.
Up next
at No. 2 Ohio State: The game that Penn State fans circled on their calendars in the preseason is finally upon us. The Nittany Lions will take on the Buckeyes at noon next Saturday at Ohio Stadium, in a game loaded with national implications.
If PSU somehow upsets Ohio State, it’d have the conference tiebreaker over the Buckeyes — meaning, as long as it doesn’t fall to Rutgers in the final week of the regular season, it’d get into the Big Ten title game. So, yes, a win over Ohio State gives the Nittany Lions the inside track to the College Football Playoff. The PSU-OSU game is essentially a play-in to the conference championship.
If Ohio State loses, a Big Ten title is out of the question — and odds are it won’t be getting into the playoff, either. So there’s a lot on the line in this next game.
This story was originally published November 16, 2019 at 3:28 PM.
