The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Reviewing Penn State football’s 28-20 win over Auburn
Penn State football pulled out plenty of tricks Saturday night in its 28-20 win over Auburn. The Nittany Lions ran a fake punt, a double pass and put tight end Tyler Warren at quarterback — twice.
The results were a mixed bag, but that type of play-calling can spark an offense, so it shouldn’t be surprising that junior running back Noah Cain said there was more to come from the group led by offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich.
“I can’t give everything away,” Cain said with a smile. “Like I said, Coach Yurcich is gonna keep dialing up different packages, personnel, formations, just for us to be successful. Like you’ve seen today, he’s gonna keep putting guys in position to be successful.”
The double pass was one of the two successful plays — and one senior receiver Jahan Dotson said was a few months in the making.
“That’s been in the playbook literally forever,” Dotson said. “We scored on it in a scrimmage versus the defense in a scrimmage during fall camp. That play has been in forever. ... I was really excited. They call the play in, I tried not to show any emotions that give it away to the defense. But I was so happy they called it. I’ve been waiting to throw the ball all year.”
Dotson had plenty of reason to be excited. The Penn State offense looked dynamic against the No. 22 team in the country and appeared to turn a corner. The Nittany Lions will have a chance to carry that momentum against an FCS opponent next week when they take on Villanova. For now, Penn State head coach James Franklin said he’s happy with how redshirt senior Sean Clifford has led the group.
“I thought he managed the game really well,” Franklin said. “He’s taken some criticism, so I’m super happy for him. Tough-minded guy, he’s physically tough. He made the plays that he should have made today. But I also thought he made a couple plays, the play that he extended and threw it in the back of the end zone. I thought that was big-time play. I’m really proud of him. I’m really happy for him. His preparation should lead to this. That’s not how the world works. Life isn’t fair. But for him right now, his preparation is leading toward success and I’m really happy for him. He is a great example for our program.”
Good
Sean Clifford: Penn State needed a few players to step up Saturday night in order to earn the win against Auburn, and none stepped up more than Clifford. The redshirt senior quarterback has started plenty of games but struggled to put everything together for the offense. This week, that was not the issue.
He showed a side of his game that there were glimpses of in the first two weeks, but really shined Saturday night — the patient side. On more than one occasion, he stayed calm in the pocket, working through his progressions and looking for an open receiver. When there wasn’t anyone open, he didn’t panic. He navigated the pocket — occasionally rolling out of it — in search of someone coming back to him to find an opening in the defense. Those openings didn’t always appear, but Clifford’s poise was a sight to behold given some of his rushed decision making in the past. He finished the game with 280 passing yards and two touchdowns to only one interception on 28-of-32 passing.
The senior quarterback was not perfect against Auburn, but he did more than enough to lead his team to victory and show he’s continuing to grow and there’s more to his game than the 2020 season.
Pass blocking: One of the reasons Clifford was able to stand in the pocket was because the offensive line kept him clean the entire night, holding the Auburn defense without a sack. The starting group — Rasheed Walker, Eric Wilson, Mike Miranda, Juice Scruggs and Caedan Wallace — was excellent throughout the game. Clifford had plenty of time to throw seemingly every time he dropped back to pass.
The group didn’t allow any unwanted pressure to drop their starter and force him into bad situations outside of the last offensive play of the half, when Clifford threw an interception on a deep ball and was leveled by an Auburn defender.
Still, given some of the inconsistency — and struggles — of the group against Wisconsin in the team’s season opener, this was a major step forward. If Clifford is going to have this much time to throw every game, this offense could quickly go from being good to being great — an important step if the Nittany Lions want to stay undefeated deep into the season.
Jahan Dotson: What do you even say about Dotson anymore? At this point you may as well just call him the best receiver in the country. Look, there are plenty of talented receivers in college football vying for that crown, but the way Dotson attracts attention from the defense is legitimately special, just like his catch radius, his speed, his open field ability, his hands, his route running ... you get the picture.
Dotson is not built like Adonis. He is not a 6-foot-5, 220-pound mammoth receiver who is the first player off the bus. But he is just as terrifying for defenses — or at least he should be. The senior receiver has the type of gravity usually reserved for elite NBA sharpshooters like Steph Curry. When Curry is on the court, a defender needs to be near him because he can shoot from anywhere. Well, when Dotson is on the field, multiple defenders need to be near him because the first guy probably can’t cover him and the second probably can’t tackle him.
There’s only so much you can say about a guy who consistently produces in every way possible. This week it was by catches 10 of his 12 targets for 78 yards and a touchdown. That doesn’t account for every time the defense stared him down while Parker Washington got open. It doesn’t account for every time he went deep and the defense vacated a portion of the field to make sure he couldn’t break a big play.
Dotson is a special talent. Saturday was just another data point that proved that.
Aggressive playcalling: Part of the team’s aggression came in the form of trick plays like the fake punt that went to senior defensive tackle PJ Mustipher, but others came in the form of going for fourth downs early to set the tone. Some will argue that those decisions were bad because they didn’t work. Penn State failed to convert on fourth down on its opening drive and even the direct snap to Mustipher was called short of the first down.
But that doesn’t mean the decision was wrong. Being aggressive in those situations generally is the right call. Your chances of scoring go up when you go for it — especially when you go for it on fourth-and-short. Franklin and the Nittany Lions showed they were willing to take chances from that standpoint and trust the defense. Because that’s the other benefit for Penn State. If those plays don’t work, the offense is backed up by one of the best defenses in the country that has played a difficult three games — including two ranked opponents — and has given up 43 points. The aggression didn’t always work out, but it should be a mainstay in the Penn State offense.
Bad
Rushing offense: Penn State could not get its ground game going, to the point that it didn’t seem worthwhile to keep pounding the ball between the tackles over and over again when it clearly wasn’t working. It should be no surprise, given how bad they looked running the ball, that the numbers back that up. The Nittany Lions finished the game with 33 rushing attempts and only 89 rushing yards. That’s a far cry from the offense that ran for 240 yards on 48 carries against Ball State the week prior.
There was an obvious step up in competition this week — one that more closely resembled the matchup in Week 1 with Wisconsin when Penn State ran the ball 18 times for 50 yards — but one would still expect better out of a team with a deep and talented running back room. The offense won’t have to worry that much about its rushing attack if it keeps passing as well as it did Saturday night, but that isn’t a given to keep up the rest of the season.
Run defense: It seemed like Penn State struggled for the first time on defense in one aspect of the game Saturday night. The Nittany Lions struggled to stop the Auburn rushing offense, to the point that it’s surprising the Tigers threw it as often as they did, finishing the game with 39 pass attempts and 40 rushing attempts. While those numbers were affected by the fact that they trailed for the entire second half, it still doesn’t excuse why they didn’t go full throttle from opening kickoff when it comes to running the ball.
There was an emphasis to running for Auburn, but there should have been a devotion to it considering how successful the tigers were. The team’s top two backs — Tank Bigsby and Jarquez Hunter — finished with 165 rushing yards on 32 carries. That seems to qualify for dominating the game. Penn State made enough plays to seemingly deter Auburn from constantly running the ball, but the defense will need to be better against the run for when it runs into teams that can also pass the ball — like Ohio State.
Ugly
Officiating: Being an official is hard. Entire fan bases can jump down your throat even when you make the right call, and millions of eyeballs are watching your every decision. That being said, you know you’ve had a rough night when the conference you officiate for sends out a statement about one of your mistakes.
“At 11:45 in the second quarter,” the statement read, “Penn State throws an incomplete pass that was judged to be Intentional Grounding. The crew’s enforcement of the penalty erroneously set the down to third; the correct down should have been second. The replay booth was consulted to confirm the down prior to the punt. The replay booth had the down as fourth down as well.
“The error was discovered during the media timeout that followed the punt and by rule it could not be corrected at that time.”
So, yeah. Basically Penn State punted on third down because the officials forgot what down it was. Not great. That’s not to mention a missed false start, a questionable spot on a fourth down and a myriad of other calls that went against both Auburn and Penn State. The missing play stands out, but the officiating crew was nowhere near the top of its game on a national stage Saturday night.
