The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Reviewing Penn State football’s 30-27 loss to Michigan State
Penn State football has lost five of its last seven games. That alone could make one think this is a team that fell apart down the stretch of the season, but look closer and that’s not the case.
The Nittany Lions lost all five of those games by single digits and lost four of those five games by four points or less. While the losses all count the same, there can be added frustration from all of those results compiling and turning into that many losses. Redshirt sophomore cornerback Daequan Hardy said he believes the team is better than the record indicated.
“I believe we’re a better team,” Hardy said. “We just make too many mistakes in critical times in games. We’ve got to clean that up.”
It’s reasonable for the team to feel it’s better than its record indicates. It defeated an Auburn team that took the No. 3 team in the country to overtime. It won a road game in Camp Randall against the now-No. 18 Wisconsin Badgers to open the season. It played a 10-win Ohio State team down to the wire on the road. It was up big on Big Ten West champion Iowa until an injury took redshirt senior starting quarterback Sean Clifford.
The Nittany Lions were a few breaks away from going 9-3 or 10-2 this season but that’s not how college football works. They finished 7-5, and therefore, are a 7-5 team.
However, that doesn’t mean there are no lessons to be learned from the season and the losses that piled up over the last seven games.
“A lot of growth needs to be done from both sides of the ball,” junior running back Devyn Ford said. “A lot of effort, a lot of different things like that, we just gotta clean (it) up. The season didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to be, obviously. Now we need to come in every single week and try to get better. That’s all you can ask from the team.”
Good
Sean Clifford: Clifford has had his fair share of ups and downs this season. He’s frequently oscillated between two versions of himself — one from 2019 who could lead a team downfield and hit on big plays while taking care of the ball and one from 2020 who did not operate with the accuracy necessary to do those things. He was much more of the former on Saturday night and he was that player in conditions that dictated a much worse performance should have happened.
Clifford was as efficient as he could have been on a snow-covered field that saw the precipitation continue throughout the game. He 23 of his 34 passing attempts for 313 yards and three touchdowns in the game despite the weather and helped the Nittany Lions move the ball down the field through the air. Clifford’s accuracy was good for the most part and he made crucial plays in crucial situations, hitting his wide receivers and giving them the opportunity to make plays against one of the worst pass defenses in the country.
Pass blocking: Penn State head coach James Franklin said it himself Saturday night, the offensive line was good when it comes to pass protection. The Penn State offensive line saw some rotation, with players such as true freshman offensive tackle Landon Tengwall getting some playing time, but the unit generally didn’t see a drop off in pass protection. Part of the reason for Clifford’s success was that he had time to survey the field in front of him and make decisions without hands in his face or defenders bearing down on him.
The group as a whole has faced plenty of criticism this season but for the most part has held up in the passing game. Michigan State doesn’t have the best pass rush in the Big Ten but there’s still something to be said for keeping your quarterback’s clean with the weather as bad as it was Saturday in East Lansing. There are plenty of issues to be had with the offensive line but its pass protection should be seen as a positive that can be built upon moving into bowl preparation. In fact, it should be leaned upon more than it has through the team’s regular season slate.
Jahan Dotson: Dotson just kind of has a spot reserved in “good” at this point, although good doesn’t do his play justice. The senior wide receiver is a superstar, the type of talent that doesn’t come around every year at Penn State, and the type of player that will be remembered as a Nittany Lion long after his college career ends. Players had issues with balance and sturdiness on the snow-covered field inside Spartan Stadium but Dotson was not one of them. He excelled in the conditions, catching eight of his 11 targets for 137 yards and two touchdowns against Michigan State.
Dotson was the primary reason the Penn State offense had success early in the game. Clifford hit him twice on back to back plays on the team’s first scoring drive to gain the final 45 yards and score a touchdown to get the Nittany Lions on the board. Then he slithered open again on the team’s next drive to notch another touchdown, this time from 30 yards out. He made defenders miss, made spectacular catches and displayed the type of route-running that would have NFL scouts drooling. Just another Saturday for Dotson.
Bad
Pass defense: Penn State’s defense has been elite for 11 games, so one game of being only good seems more jarring than it probably should be. The Nittany Lions have stifled the best parts of opposing offenses week in and week out this season but Saturday they struggled with everything the Spartans wanted to throw at them. They were efficient through the air, completing 19 of 30 passing attempts for 268 yards and two touchdowns. They were good on the ground where potential Heisman Trophy candidate Kenneth Walker III led the way with 30 carries for 138 yards and a touchdown.
The difference is, the Spartans are supposed to be good on the ground. They’re not supposed to have the type of passing attack they put on display Saturday night in the regular season finale. Redshirt sophomore quarterback Peyton Thorne navigated the pocket well and delivered the ball in catchable spots to his wide receivers. The most notable, of course, being the touchdown pass he threw on 4th-and-15 with a 23-20 lead that all but ended the game. Thorne threw a jump ball to wide receiver Jaylen Reed, who beat cornerback Johnny Dixon to the ball and caught the ball. The secondary in general did not play as well as it usually does in coverage and it showed in Thorne’s final stat line.
Run blocking: The offensive line was good in pass protection, like it has been all season, and it was bad in run protection ... like it has been all season. The unit hasn’t done well on the ground and there was no reason to believe that would be different Saturday night. Unsurprisingly, they struggled to create holes for running backs, although sophomore Keyvone Lee was able to break a few big runs thanks to a few creases he could sneak through and get downfield.
While those flashes are nice, the consistency needs to be there for a running game to be successful and it wasn’t. Too often assignments were missed, or linemen were pushed off their spot, freeing up linebackers to make tackles at the line of scrimmage. The offensive line has been unable to get much of a push all season and that was exacerbated without usual starting left tackle Rasheed Walker, who missed his second game in a row.
Asking the group, which was shorthanded, to succeed at something it hasn’t all season on Saturday was setting it up to fail. Which brings us to ...
Ugly
Offensive play calling: At some point balance is not the answer for the Penn State offense. There is a clear difference between the offense when it passes the ball and when it runs the ball. The offensive line looks like one that spends most of its time preparing to pass protect in games and not nearly as much preparing to get downhill and run block. Even with those struggles, offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich continued to call run play after run play, as if it was mandatory to hit a certain number of run plays per game.
And maybe it was. After all, Franklin said previously that he’s on the headset telling Yurcich not to forget to run the ball. Regardless of who is making the final call, it’s a bad one. Penn State has not been well-equipped to run the ball most of the season and it’s been especially obvious of late. Sure, there are exceptions like the Michigan game where arguably two of the best pass rushers in the country in Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo were barreling toward Sean Clifford every snap, but that’s not the norm.
The norm is that Penn State struggles to run the ball and does well passing the ball. It stands to reason, then, that the Nittany Lions should be throwing the ball much more than it runs the ball. But that’s not the case. The team seeks balance. Where did that balance get it? It got it one loss away from a 6-6 record — near-perfect balance.
