The Penn State Football Show

As Pete said, it has been hard to even think about the Iowa game, but a combination of tentative playcalling, not executing offensively, and not finishing the game cost the Lions a shot at a national championship. Whatever. Now we play for the Rose Bowl and a matchup with USC most likely, where Penn State will be a huge underdog. Still, you've got to be excited about that. Beating USC would make me happy for a long while.

Now to Indiana. We were all terribly wrong last week, but I again feel that Penn State will dismantle this team. They should have no shot in this game, those Hoosiers. Last year Maurice Evans was an animal in this game, and I feel like he and the rest of the defense, which did a pretty solid job last week, will be fired up. Coming out hungry is necessary, and I think the offense will get going again after two poor performances on the road. The shot at a national championship is still there if some crazy things happen, and remember last year Ohio State at this point was ranked 8th and ended up jumping into the championship game. Doubtful, but possible....and made more possible with some slaughtering of opponents. Penn State will be mad, and they will score a lot of points at the expense of the worst team in the Big Ten.

Last night, I wasted about 30 minutes of my time writing my longest post of the year about how crushing the loss to Iowa was, only to lose the entire thing when my internet cut out. It was almost as upsetting and frustrating as the game itself. But not quite. I think the silence on this blog over the past week speaks for itself.

I simply don't have the energy to write it all again. In fact, I think if I spend any more time thinking about that game, I may develop an aneurism in my brain. So, all I will say, is that there are no excuses for that loss. Penn State had every reason to come to play and be motivated, and no reason to look ahead, and they still managed to lose the game. They even had a number of breaks go their way and still could not take advantage. They had a golden opportunity for an unbeaten season and they blew it. No excuses.

Obviously it was upsetting that they lost, but the bottom line is they lost the game themselves. If they had lost on a bad call or a fluke play, then I really would have been upset. But they could have and should have won that game, and they didn't. It happens. So they will not be going to the national championship this year, and they don't deserve to. I can feel that aneurism coming on right about now, so I'm going to stop.

In regards to the game today: Penn State should win big. In 99 after they lost to Minnesota, they collapsed and dropped the last two. In 05 after losing to Michigan, they responded with their most dominant performance of season, crushing Illinois 63-10. Hopefully this team is more like the 05 squad than the 99 team. I guess we will find out today.

Once again, Penn State found a way to break the BCS Championship dreams of their fans. This ranks up there with Michigan 05 and Minnesota 99 with one of the most disappointing losses I can remember. There are too many problems with this game to name them all, but I will go over a few.

1. 23 minutes and change to 6 minutes. That was the time of possession in the first half. How your high powered offense only puts 13 points on the scoreboard with this is unacceptable. The conservative play calling on away games has been a major reason PSU has sucked on the road since 2ooo. If it wasn't for Pryor fumbling the ball, I doubt they would've won the Ohio State game.

2. Ricky Stanzi is not a good quarterback. Watching the Iowa-Pitt game earlier in the year, I thought this would be an easy game for the defense to dominate an over matched inexperienced quarterback. That did not happen. Shonn Green is one hell of a running back, but so is Chris Wells and we kept him in check. How do you not play bump and run coverage on Iowa's wide receivers? Instead, our cornerbacks gave the wide outs eight yard cushions. Watching Iowa's recievers during the final quarter run freely off the snap is the reason they marched down the field to set up the game winning field goal. Where was the pressure from the linebackers? They dropped back into zone coverages and all they covered was grass. It was very frustrating seeing our defense play soft. It looked like a funeral on our sideline. Where was the intensity? Where was the Senior Leadership? Why didn't we have heaters on the sideline in a 33 degree game?

3. Daryll Clark 9-23 for 86 yards 1 interception with an average of 3.7 yards a pass is not going to win you a big ten road game. Derrick Willams one completion went for 23 yards. Clark was under considerable pressure most of the game. I thought it would've been a good idea to let Devlin take a series and air it out. It worked at Florida with Tim Tebow and Chris Leak, so I don't want to hear you can't rotate quarterbacks, especially with how ineffective Clark was.

4. Evan Royster 26 attempts for 90 yards and Stephfon Green 3 attempts for 31 yards. Why didn't Green have more rushing attempts. He brings the element of the big play every time he touches the ball. I'm not trying to bash Royster, he is a fantastic running back, but I thought mixing a little Green couldn't hurt. Hell, they put D wheels back at quarterback and ran direct snaps with him, could've did the same thing with Green.

Even though I am extremely disappointed with this loss both on a coaching and player performance level. I will still be very proud of an Big Ten Championship 11-1 squad going to the Rose Bowl to take on a extremely talented USC team. No one, not even myself, predicted this at seasons start. Lets take care of business in these next two weeks!

For the Glory