Obviously the score was bad but instead of posting about the negatives, i took some positives from today and maybe others dont see them or care, but i have been watching for many years, and there were things we did today that we were unable to do in most of the meetings with penn state.
1. We got to the QB and sacked him several times. If you look at psu’s offensive numbers, they were not eye popping. The turnovers were very costly. Our defense let up a few big plays, but i think they tired out and if you have 3-4 turnovers plus a kick return for a score, it gets frustrating and let your guard down for a moment, and the differential in score gets out of hand. Same happened in the Michigan game.
2. We were able to move the ball and importantly, we had sharp passes over the middle that we haven’t seen in quite some time. We didnt knock the cover off the ball in the running game, but saw movement. Alot of times it wasnt 1st down that killed us. We had drives where we ran for 6-7 yards on first down. But tried the same run up the middle on 2nd down and got stopped for no gain.
I think we had some bad breaks. The off sides call that should have been a recovered fumble was deep in their territory and we didn’t capitalize on the avery young hit and fumble. Overall, penn state has a good defense. I think we need to have a deeper play book to overcome their blitzes on 3rd down. You can’t just roll to the right and throw the ball away. Its the same play on every 3rd and long and we didnt use any other alternative.
Its always hard to be positive when you dont see the immediate results but penn state made Tulia look like a freshman last week and Maryland put up zero points.