After Penn State narrowly escaped an upset at the hands of Bowling Green Saturday in its 2024 home opener in Beaver Stadium to win 34-27, Penn State has an early-season bye week coming up on its schedule.
BG surprisingly led 24-20 at halftime, but the Nittany Lions emerged from a Jekyll first half to rebound with a Hyde second half.
Now, Penn State will continue the MACtion portion of its schedule, when it hosts Kent State on Sept. 21. Poor Kent State. The Golden Flashes lost 55-24 to Pitt last week, fell 23-17 to mighty St. Francis on Saturday and NOW travel to Tennessee next Saturday. They’ll be OMG-and-3 when Penn State next takes the field.
For Penn State, let’s take a look at what James Franklin & Co. are good-byeing, buying and selling as they look to regroup after a 2-0 start, shaky at times, to begin the 2024 season:
BUYING
1. A $1.5 million payday. Bowling Green’s athletic department made a tidy $1.5 million in guaranteed money for traveling to Beaver Stadium for Saturday’s game, according to Johnny McGonigal of PennLive.
Here’s what that money means to BG football: According to the school’s annual report to the NCAA, Bowling Green had $3.6 million in overall football-related revenue in 2023. So the payday for playing Penn State in 2024 represents a 42% increase in monies in for Falcon football. Overall, BG football spent $9.8 million on football last season, and showed a loss of $6.2 million.
Penn State football’s 2023 numbers by comparison: $109.6 in revenue, $62.7 million in expenses and $46.9 million in “profit.”
2. Tight end Tyler Warren. He was on the precipice of declaring for the NFL Draft last January; it looked like he was a third- or fourth-round pick, for sure. Lucky for Penn State — and Andy Kotenicki and Drew Allar — that Warren returned. On Saturday, Allar targeted him for 40% of his total passes, and Warren made catches on all eight for 146 yards. That’s an all-time PSU record for a Penn State tight end, surpassing the 136 yards by Matt Kranchick vs. Wisconsin in 2003.
Warren, a real team guy and pretty quiet overall, didn’t know he had set the record until I told him post-game. “It’s cool and I appreciate being able to do it at Penn State with a lot of great tight ends,” Warren said. “Last week it was Trey (Wallace). This week it was me who made some big plays, then it could be someone else the next game coming up.”
Wallace, the presumptive WR1, had five catches for 117 yards and a TD vs. West Virginia last week, was targeted three times vs. Bowling Green and officially came away with zero receptions. However, a 16-yard reception was negated following a holding call on offensive tackle Drew Shelton.
3. D-end Abdul Carter. After being MIA for a decent portion of the game last week at WVU, Carter was a force vs. BG. His knockdown of a crucial fourth-and-1 pass attempt by BG QB Connor Bazelak, with the Falcons ahead 17-14 and driving, was big. Carter was really active and was second in tackles on the PSU defense, with seven. He even lined up in the middle, and dropped back into pass defense for an intriguing Micah Parsons-like change of pace.
4. Key fourth-quarter picks of Bazelak by Penn State’s Tony Rojas and Zakee Wheatley on back-to-back drives, just 140 seconds apart. Turnovers gained is one of the top 3 stats in football. Rojas’ diving grab was a work of timing, art and athleticism. Wheatley’s grab of an uncharacteristic broken bat infield pop fly from Bazelak was indicative of Wheatley’s much-acclaimed nose for the ball.
GOOD-BYEING
1. To unbridled optimism. BG was a 34.5-point underdog; Penn State won by 7. Tough math. Franklin acknowledged the Nittany Lions have work to do with next week off, the first of a rare two-bye week schedule: “It’s weird to have a bye week after your second game, but I think it’s going to be important for us, and we’re going to need to maximize this time and then obviously, we’re going to focus on our next opponent.” There was not a big on-field post-game celebration.
2. Hello to a silver lining. Being in such a close contest will certainly get the Nittany Lions’ attention, from the head coach through his staff and all along the roster — to say nothing of the fan base. The aura of good feeling after winning in Morgantown was washed away after Bowling Green led again and again: 7-0, 10-7, 17-7, 17-14, 24-17 and 24-20 before Penn State finally took the lead. But never pulled away.
3. Hello, Tom Allen. Penn State’s new defensive coordinator has big DC shoes to fill, and is in a pair of shoes he has not worn for awhile after seven seasons as the head coach at Indiana (33-49). Manny Diaz, his predecessor, had the Nittany Lions among the tops in the nation in several key categories, and Diaz had a coolness and a coaching style (and results) that resonated with the entire defense.
Before Diaz, Brent Pry was a longtime upbeat fixture at Penn State, and was very close to his players, and had a system in place that annually produced very strong results. Allen is still new to PSU, still connecting with his players and — it seems to me — still adjusting to the fact that he’s not responsible for the entire squad. It is his job to get the PSU defense ready to go from the first drive of the game — that’s his Job 1 to focus on during the bye week.
In the past two seasons, only Purdue (31 points, in a night road opener), Michigan (41), Ohio State (44) — all in 2022 — and Ole Miss (38, minus several PSU starters) in the 2023 Peach Bowl scored more points against Penn State than the 24 points Bowling Green had on Saturday.
SELLING
1. A horrid first half by the Penn State defense. Granted, Bazelak was the real deal. Saturday was his start No. 42 as a college quarterback — at Bowling Green (13), Missouri (20) and Indiana (9). That includes the 2022 season at Indiana under Allen, when Bazelak threw for over 2,300 yards and 13 TDs.
Still. Early on, Penn State looked uninspired, unprepared and less aggressive than it did vs. WVU and perplexed on how to stop Bazelak, who was 13 of 15 for 167 yards and two touchdowns in the first half. The second half was a different story. PSU has a lot of time to figure it out. Maybe Franklin needs to bring back the juice boxes from the 2016 season.
2. Penalties. Dumb and costly. Penn State had seven penalties for 76 yards vs. Bowling Green and eight for 60 yards at West Virginia. That’s two per quarter. Way too many. Wide receiver Omari Evans’ offensive pass interference vs. BG took a TD off the board. Franklin talks about cleaning things up. In this situation, it may be prudent to call in Winston “The Wolf” Wolf.
3. Third downs. Penn State was 2 of 9 on third down. OC Andy Kotelnicki needs to do better. Franklin said so: “The thing that we have got to get better at is we’ve got to be better on third down, because we’re not getting enough plays to be able to distribute the ball around to all of our guys. We’re not getting enough plays to do it. And the way to resolve that is to be better on third down, or, you know, obviously getting the first downs on first and second down and never even get to third down.”
Penn State’s offense ran 57 plays. BG’s offense had 66. Penn State had 60 plays last week against West Virginia. In 2023, Penn State’s offense averaged 71.4 plays per game.
4. Beaver Stadium attendance. The announced official attendance for the 2024 home-season-opener was 103,861. That was PSU’s smallest home crowd — not counting COVID year 2020 — since the Nov. 30, 2019, game against visiting Rutgers, which Penn State entered having lost two of its previous three games.
