The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Reviewing Penn State’s 28-17 loss to Ohio State
Penn State safety Lamont Wade didn’t have to think about the question long Saturday before offering a response.
Ever before, in his college career, did he make a more meaningful individual impact than he did against Ohio State?
“Probably not, probably not,” Wade said, repeating the phrase twice more.
The Nittany Lions didn’t win Saturday, falling 28-17 to the Buckeyes, but Wade was the team’s spark. He was the reason Saturday’s tough road game didn’t turn into a blowout. He tied a Big Ten record with three forced fumbles, and he became just the sixth FBS player since 2000 to force three fumbles and recover another.
He didn’t stop there, either. Playing mostly in the box — “Kind of felt like a linebacker,” he said — Wade racked up 10 tackles, one sack and two tackles for loss. And a lot of that dominance came right after he felt responsible for not stopping Ohio State’s third touchdown in a 21-0 deficit.
“After I got that touchdown scored on me, I kind of just blacked (out),” he said. “I told myself I got to do something to impact the game.”
Did he ever. The Nittany Lions scored a touchdown on the next drive. The play after that, Wade forced a fumble and Penn State scored another TD. Then Wade forced another fumble, and the Nittany Lions kicked a field goal. Suddenly, in a span of nine minutes, Penn State trailed just 21-17 in the third quarter.
Wade’s performance didn’t ease his disappointment after the loss. He didn’t smile with reporters. He didn’t wax poetic on how he knocked the ball out of Justin Fields’ hands at the goal-line in the first quarter.
But he did share the message he told his team afterward.
“I just told those guys that this sucks,” he said. “This is a tough pill to swallow. It’s hard. But we fought so hard that it helped me hold my tears back because of how hard we fought, and I had to let those guys know I was proud of every single one of them because we didn’t lay down when we could’ve.
“We punched back.”
Good
DE Yetur Gross-Matos and the defense: Sure, the defense surrendered 417 yards and wasn’t perfect Saturday. But here’s a needed reminder: The Buckeyes might be the best team in the country, and their 28 points were the fewest they’ve scored since last season’s Rose Bowl.
In the first half, Gross-Matos even outshined Ohio State defensive end Chase Young, who might be a Heisman candidate in spite of a two-game suspension. Gross-Matos finished Saturday’s game with nine tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss and two sacks. He was a constant thorn in the side of the Ohio State offensive line, and it might’ve been his best performance of the season.
His play helped put some backfield pressure on the Buckeyes. Not only did the Nittany Lions force four fumbles — and recover three of them — but they also boasted 10 tackles for loss. It was a slow start, and cornerback John Reid didn’t have his best game, but this is “Good, Bad, Ugly” — not “Perfect, Bad Ugly.”
The Nittany Lions fared better than any other defense the Buckeyes have faced. They kept Penn State in this game. And, despite any shortcomings, a 3-1 turnover margin will get you in the “Good” category every time.
Second-half fight: Raise your hand if you counted out Penn State when it trailed 21-0. Don’t be shy; we did, too. It was virtually impossible not to; Ohio State has thumped plenty of opponents. (OK, all of them.) And James Franklin’s squad didn’t show a whole lot in the first 33 minutes of gametime.
But it’s almost as if the Nittany Lions can sense when they’re being counted out — because, historically, they seem to rise to the occasion. And they did in this, case too. Despite being outplayed for 33 minutes, they flipped the entire script in nine minutes.
Seriously. That’s how long it took. In nine minutes, it went from 21-0 Ohio State to 21-17 Ohio State. And how did that happen? Well, two forced fumbles by Lamont Wade certainly helped. But we’ll go into more detail in a moment. (Hint: It’s the next point down.) But, for now, let’s leave you with a quote about what these Nittany Lions learned from themselves in those nine minutes.
“When adversity hits you, you really see who you are and what you’re made of,” defensive tackle Antonio Shelton said. “There’s no ounce of quit in anybody that was on the field. As long as there was time on the clock, there was a chance to win the game. That’s how I felt.”
It’s fine to be disappointed with the loss if you’re a fan, but you’ve got to commend the effort at the end. A lot of other teams would’ve just given up mentally. Penn State didn’t.
Backup QB Will Levis: We briefly considered putting Levis in both the “Good” and the “Bad” before thinking better of it. Levis threw a bad fourth-quarter interception and his soft cadence didn’t do the offensive line any favors. (“We were just in a position where the line could not hear him,” James Franklin said. “They were guessing the cadence.”)
But — and this is a big “but” — Levis stepped up in a big way when starting QB Sean Clifford crumpled to the turf. Honestly, that kind of poise was unexpected, considering he went into Saturday with eight career pass attempts against Power 5 competition.
If Penn State was a long-shot to win before Clifford’s injury, it seemed all over when the inexperienced Levis entered the game, inheriting first-and-10 at the OSU 43. But his hard-nosed running style helped spark the offense. Trailing 21-0, he cut the deficit to 21-7 by going 43 yards in five plays. (He accounted for 16 yards; Journey Brown had the other 27.)
Lamont Wade then forced a fumble, Levis completed a 12-yard pass, and he then rushed for a 1-yard touchdown to make it 21-14. Wade then forced another fumble, and Levis had the offense marching. If it wasn’t for a dropped Brown pass — “I was seeing ghosts,” Brown said — he likely would’ve had a TD pass. Instead, PSU settled for a field goal to make it a 21-17 game.
Again, it bears repeating: Penn State trailed 21-0, the starting QB went down, and the unheralded backup entered the game and helped cut the deficit to 21-17 against the nation’s No. 2 team. If that doesn’t deserve to be in the “Good” — and only in the “Good” — we don’t know what does.
Bad
Slow start: In Penn State’s previous two games, it started out slow — and it cost the Nittany Lions a win against Minnesota. Against Ohio State, PSU couldn’t afford the same kind of start.
But, well, the Nittany Lions couldn’t avoid it.
After a six-play, 18-yard drive from the Penn State offense, Ohio State took over at its own 9-yard line. What followed was a 13-play, 91-yard touchdown drive where the Buckeyes attempted only one pass — an incompletion — and converted two key third downs, including a third-and-12, where linebacker Jan Johnson whiffed on a running QB in Justin Fields.
Penn State countered with a three-and-out, and it was fortunate to force a fumble on the next drive, right before Fields reached the end zone. It was a “Bad” start, and it could’ve been even worse.
It really didn’t get any better in the first half. The Nittany Lions were out-gained 255 yards to 64 yards. A better start could’ve flipped this game on its head but, for three straight games now, the Nittany Lions have needed a wake-up call that didn’t seem to come until halftime.
Offensive miscues, inconsistency: Pick a Penn State drive — any non-scoring drive — and you can probably pick out a mistake. There were plenty to choose from here.
In the final quarter, backup QB Will Levis tried to force a pass to TE Pat Freiermuth, which resulted in an easy pick. Back-to-back false starts also turned a fourth-and-2 into a fourth-and-12, which led to a turnover on downs. In the third quarter, RB Journey Brown dropped what even he acknowledged would’ve been a sure touchdown. “I just happened not to make the play,” he said. “So I was going to get up and focus on the next one.”
In the second quarter, on third-and-7 from the Ohio State 36, QB Sean Clifford faced quite a bit of pressure — and threw a high pass to Jahan Dotson, who couldn’t pull it in. Call it a drop, call it a bad pass or bad OL blocking — heck, call it all three — but that was a crucial miscue. And, on the opening drive in the first quarter, Clifford missed Freiermuth — who had beaten his man — by short-arming it and not tossing it outside enough. (Again, feel free to blame the OL, too, for not picking up blitzing LB Malik Harrison.) But the play-call was the right one, and Penn State decided to punt.
There are plenty of other examples of drops, missed blocks and bad decisions — yes, from the play-caller, too (What was up with that third-down sideline pass to Noah Cain?) — but we can’t mention every mistake, or this section alone might be a few thousand words. There was some “Good” to the offense, which we mentioned above. But, overall, there was way too much “Bad” to feel good about the offense as a whole. It looked lost way too often Saturday.
Punting in Ohio State territory: Speaking of bad calls ... We understand the first punt, on fourth-and-4 from the Ohio State 42. Although that was controversial, it was the first drive of the game — and the coaching staff did not yet know the Buckeyes were going to drive 91 yards on 13 plays to score a touchdown.
Not a huge fan of the call, but understandable. But the next punt in Ohio State territory? Nonsensical.
At the start of the second quarter, Penn State faced fourth-and-7 from the Ohio State 36. At that point, the Buckeyes had just two offensive possessions — and drove the length of the field each time. They led just 7-0 because, on the second drive, they fumbled into the end zone.
If you want to upset the No. 2 team in the nation, you can’t play it conservative by punting from the 36.
Recently, James Franklin railed against a Penn State columnist for reporting “opinions as facts” when it came to said columnist criticizing his decision for a two-point try. (And Franklin was right.) Well, here’s a fact: Based on several statistical models, Franklin made the wrong call Saturday.
According to the New York Times, which calculated 10 years of NFL data, teams have a better chance of winning when going for it in that exact situation. Football Study Hall’s Jake Troch tweaked that formula in 2017 to better align with college football, and he came to the same conclusion: In that situation, fourth-and-7 from the opponent 36, go for it.
Franklin didn’t. Ohio State didn’t score on the next possession, but Penn State didn’t score either. It was a “Bad” call — and, according to those models, that’s not just opinion.
Ugly
Talent gap: There’s no denying the tremendous job that James Franklin and his staff have done on the recruiting trail. The Nittany Lions have had a top-25 class every season since Franklin took over, with most of his classes ranked inside the top 15.
But, despite all that, it’s clear that the Nittany Lions still have a lot of catching up to do with an “elite” team like Ohio State.
For every star Penn State boasts — such as WR KJ Hamler, TE Pat Freiermuth, DE Yetur Gross-Matos and LB Micah Parsons — Ohio State seems to have almost three. There was no clear weakness to this Buckeyes team, which is why they’re able to reload every year.
Penn State is one of the best teams in the nation, but the Buckeyes might be the best. And, as Franklin has alluded to in the past, there’s a giant gulf between No. 1 and No. 15.
Saturday showed the Nittany Lions still have a long way to work to get there.
This story was originally published November 24, 2019 at 7:23 PM.
