The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Reviewing Penn State football’s 17-7 win over Northwestern

James Franklin put it well following his team’s 17-7 win over Northwestern at Beaver Stadium Saturday evening. It was a great day for football despite projections of rain throughout the day — until those projections came true.

“From all the reports I was getting, we were going to have a tough weather game,” the Penn State head coach said, “but it was beautiful all day — until we stepped on the field.”

The field was not quite a mess for the game but the ball was soaking wet and there was plenty of mud to sling around. That was never more apparent then when the team celebrated following the win.

Joey Porter Jr. and several of his teammates sprinted to the end zone after the victory and dove head first into the “PENN” of the PENN STATE emblazoned in white on the grass. He and his teammates slid several yards forward, splashing water and mud up around them.

The joyful mess they made came after he and the rest of the defense made more of one on the field, giving the Northwestern offense almost no chance of success and muddying up their plays to match the playing surface they played on.

Now the team must turn the page and prepare for what’s coming next — dates with Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio State just after the Nittany Lions’ bye week.

“Not really our formula for how we win, but again, like I said earlier, there is a ton of value of being able to win games under less-than-ideal situations,” Franklin said. “So, we’re going to go into this bye week. It is a bye week, not an off-week, a bye week and we must get better this week. We have a tough stretch coming up with Michigan. We must get in that facility.”

Good

Takeaways: The rain definitely helped but there’s no doubting the defense’s nose for the football. The group turned the Wildcats over three times and that number probably would have been higher had the Northwestern offense tempted it downfield more in the game. Ji’Ayir Brown pulled in the lone interception — his second of the season — on a ball that was begging to be intercepted. That seems to happen a lot with this unit, where it looks like the defensive backs were the target on the play because they position themselves so well defensively and have a knack for getting to the football.

The other turnovers came on fumbles and allowed the offense to work with shorter fields. Those plays were increasingly important Saturday evening because the grass was closer to mud than anything else and neither team had much interest in throwing the ball. That meant the running games were going to decide the game and Penn State’s was able to thanks to the defense putting in the work to get the offense the ball back in advantageous positions.

Ji’Ayir Brown: Speaking of Brown, he’s quickly becoming one of the best — if not the best — safeties in the country. He’s showing off a new layer to his game every week on top of the ones he’s already spectacular at. This week the latter was the interception and the former was him hammering a running back in the backfield for a big loss. He has excellent instincts and really that’s the reason why he’s doing everything he does. Brown just knows where to be. He has a way of involving himself in plays he has no business being close to and being the biggest presence in the ones where he is supposed to.

I feel more than confident he’s going to play on Sundays starting next year and he’s probably going to do it for a very long time. It helps that his play is manifesting itself into an unbridled confidence few others can match. And to be clear, he doesn’t even come close to the line of arrogance. Instead it’s an obvious sense of self-belief that’s built up based on the evidence he puts on tape every week. Brown is not good. He is not great. He is elite and this week can just go into the catalog of great games he’s already amassed.

Barney Amor: I’m gonna be honest, I don’t have a ton to say here because there’s only so much you can say about a punter. But oh man is Amor good. He doesn’t have the strongest leg in the world but there may not be a better punter in college football when it comes to accuracy. He can spin it with the best of them and turn a ball back, left or right near the goal line to pin the opponents deep. He does an excellent job of setting the already elite defense up to succeed and putting the opposing offenses in severely compromised positions.

Amor is a legitimate special teams weapon and that’s a very big positive in a year where things haven’t gone particularly well for the Penn State special teams unit.

The running game, fumbles aside: Pretty big aside but we’ll get there soon enough. All three of Penn State’s scholarship running backs had at least 4 yards per carry. And yes, that number is three and not four because Devyn Ford is no longer on the team as Franklin announced postgame. Kaytron Allen sat out the first half for undisclosed reasons but came on strong with 21 (!) carries in the second half. He and fellow freshman Nick Singleton carried the ball 42 (!!) times for 173 yards and were able to consistently gain yardage against the Wildcats.

It helps that Keyvone Lee, who is now the veteran in the room, added 10 carries of his own to bring the group’s total to 52 (!!!) carries while gaining 40 yards. The three runners all did what they should against a unit that they’re flat out more talented than. While there is room to grow for the group — again, we’ll get to that soon — the positives were overwhelmingly clear whenever each of the three had, and held onto, the ball.

Bad

Turnovers: Here we go. Five. FIVE. F-I-V-E. They turned the ball over five times! That is not bad, it is horrendous especially against a Northwestern team that is decidedly fine on defense. Most of the turnovers came on fumbles with one being the interception Sean Clifford threw. Let’s focus on the fumbles, though. It’s tough to parse how much of the issue was because the weather was a sloppy mess and how much was because of ball security.

The Nittany Lion running backs went without gloves but it didn’t help. Credit to Northwestern for getting a hat to the ball and forcing it out — quite literally, when they put their helmets on the football twice — but Penn State can’t afford those types of mistakes. They ended up not mattering because the defense is so good they suffocated the Wildcat offense anyway, but still, that isn’t good enough. Penn State’s runners have to hold onto the ball and not give it back because against better opponents it will lead to points.

Sean Clifford: I feel bad at this point. Clifford was excellent postgame, taking responsibility for his mistakes, but at the end of the day this is about evaluating his play and not his professionalism. He wasn’t really inconsistent in the game. He was just mostly bad. That doesn’t account for the one dime he dropped in to Parker Washington down the field because frankly that doesn’t make up for all of the mistakes. Clifford was inaccurate, nervy under pressure and indecisive against Northwestern.

His passes were rarely perfect and more often than not they were totally off the mark. That includes a pass that should have easily been intercepted where he threw it directly to a Northwestern defensive back. I’ve watched that play over 10 times and I still can’t figure out what he saw. Between that and the missed ball on a third down to a wide open Washington, he could have dearly cost the team Saturday evening. This time, he didn’t but that doesn’t preclude it from happening in the future.

Ugly

The rest of it: The weather, the passing, the fumbles. All of it was really bad. Saturday’s game was one of the sloppiest of the season and there’s too much to single out as the lone ugly aspect of the matchup. The Nittany Lions and Wildcats are both probably happy it’s over with — although Penn State is probably happier because, you know, winning and stuff. There isn’t much anyone can do about the weather and frankly I’m just happy it didn’t turn into a lightning delay filled game like it could have.

Instead it was your run of the mill, three-plus hour mess of a football game during a rainstorm. Let’s not do this one again. Snow is fun, warm weather is nice, but rain is a different animal and it had a clear impact on Saturday’s game.

This story was originally published October 2, 2022 at 10:45 AM.

Jon Sauber

Centre Daily Times

(814) 231-6461

Jon Sauber covers Penn State football and men’s basketball for the Centre Daily Times. He earned his B.A. in digital and print journalism from Penn State and his M.A. in sports journalism from IUPUI. His previous stops include jobs at The Indianapolis Star, the NCAA, and Rivals.