Know why Penn State is so different this season? Look no further than Saturday’s final drive
Before the final whistle, Saturday started to look all too familiar to seasons of Penn State past: A one-loss team with only inferior opponents left on the schedule — losing.
The Nittany Lions have become an easy target in recent years for their inability to win big games when they need them most. So when Penn State trailed against Minnesota at halftime Saturday, and again late in the third quarter, it felt as if history might be poised to repeat itself.
But, like it has time and time again this season, these Nittany Lions proved they’re different — getting aggressive on the final drive to finish the game on their own terms. With a spot in the College Football Playoff possibly on the line, the Nittany Lions left Minneapolis with a 26-25 win and all of their goals for the season still in front of them.
They did not make it easy, though. There were three fourth-down conversions on Penn State’s final drive, when Penn State clung to a 26-25 advantage and simply wanted to run out the clock with 5:48 left in the game. One conversion came on a fake punt, one on a quarterback sneak and one on the final play of the game that required the team’s two most valuable offensive players — QB Drew Allar and TE Tyler Warren — to connect in a crucial moment.
And the decision to go with the final call they did — with Allar hitting a wide-open Warren on the back side of the play after the QB’s first read was taken away — exemplified the trust that Allar has built with head coach James Franklin and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki.
“It’s actually the play that I kinda wanted,” Allar said. “Because I felt like it was a longer fourth-and-1. I asked Coach Franklin what he thought about it. And then (Kotelnicki) liked it. The main goal was to just to hopefully get it to Nick in the flat. ...
“Tyler is the second read on it. I saw Nick was covered up, I felt somebody looping so I was like, ‘All right, step up, and try to get the first down.’ And I saw Tyler waving his hands. And he did a great job of waving his hands, and he did a great job of staying in bounds and just securing the ball and not scoring a touchdown in that situation.”
And those situations are not ones the Nittany Lions have always had success in. Sometimes they don’t even have the opportunity to, with aggressive play-calling being an issue throughout Franklin’s tenure. That was even the case in the first half, with two punts on fourth-and-1 contributing to Minnesota’s halftime lead.
But that last drive was indicative of what this team has become. This is a group that believes in itself and what it’s doing. And the players believe in each other.
That self-belief is part of where the aggressiveness can come from, because even when Franklin decided to punt, Warren and the offense still thought they could get the job done if called upon.
“As an offense we’re always gonna want to go for it,” Warren said. “We’re gonna let the coaches do their job. We’re not gonna cause problems if we don’t agree with it. But I think sometimes we can if the O-line is up there and they’re getting on them to go for it. (We) might swing their decision. But I feel like we’re confident. We’re gonna want to go for it any chance we can.”
Of course, there is also some luck involved. Franklin and his team wouldn’t look quite as good if Minnesota came out with a different look than the one it did on the first fourth-down attempt — the fake punt.
Reserve lineman Dominic Rulli is tasked with checking out of the play if the defense doesn’t show the look Penn State wants to see, which means punter Riley Thompson would’ve been punting on the play if the Gophers came out with a different look.
“We’ve been working on it since training camp,” Franklin said about the fake punt. “We’ve called it in other games this year. But unless you have the right look, you can’t run it. ... Typically where you call it they’re gonna be in safe. They had their defense on the field, I thought it was gonna be safe again. And then when we ran our punt team on, they ran their punt return team out, so I thought we had a chance. And then the look allowed us to run it.”
Their decision to match personnel with Penn State was enough for tight end Luke Reynolds to take a direct snap 32 yards for a first down, sparking an aggressive mentality for the Nittany Lions that allowed them to convert on the other two fourth downs.
And, sure, the aggressiveness came against an outmatched Minnesota team, but that doesn’t make it any less meaningful. A program that has spent the better part of the last decade coughing up its most important games with poor decisions and execution issues, and losing a chance at its goals in the process, didn’t let its old habits return.
And now a win over Maryland on Nov. 30 is all that separates the Nittany Lions from not just making the College Football Playoff, but hosting a first-round game in Beaver Stadium.
And heading into December, for the first time in the Franklin era, all of Penn State’s goals could be in front of it.
