Penn State heads to West Lafayette this week for a Thursday night showdown against Purdue to open the 2022 season, looking to turn the tide for a program that has gone 11-11 over the past two years. As always, the opening game of the year comes with plenty of questions to be answered and early season curiosities that will slowly turn into season-long storylines, both for better and worse.
The good thing for onlookers — and bad thing for coaches — so early in the year is that the Nittany Lions aren’t short on questions and nothing helps answer them quite like finally playing some games.
With so many things to choose from as Penn State’s 2022 campaign gets underway, here are five storylines to follow in the game itself during a primetime showdown against the Boilermakers.
Offensive Line Play: Penn State’s season will probably go as its offensive line does. That’s not to say the only determining factor will be this group, but if the Nittany Lions can give Sean Clifford time to pass and running backs the holes to run, this group can be good enough to win plenty of games. If the offensive line can’t put it together consistently enough, it could be another long season. One game does not a trend make, but a good showing in Week 1 from this group wouldn’t hurt matters any. Penn State doesn’t need to be — and probably will never be under offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich — a run heavy team, but if it can start to convert the short yardage situations and break off the occasional 10-20 yard run, this team could do something in 2022.
Introduce Yourself: Mitchell Tinsley comes to Penn State with the hopes of helping replace Jahan Dotson in the receiving room alongside Parker Washington. If Tinsley can bring the same sort of hands and route running that Dotson did, Clifford is going to have two immediately viable threats to work with in the passing game. Tinsley has played a lot of football so the growing pains should be short. That being said, we’ve heard a lot about him this offseason; now it’s time to see him in action. Elsewhere, look to see which new or rising faces start to make a name for themselves in the opening week of the year.
Anything New?: Part of the reason Penn State opted to hire Manny Diaz following the departure of Brent Pry was the belief and understanding he would bring a very similar style of defense with him. Of course, everyone plays and coaches defense just a little bit differently, so are the things that make Diaz’s defense his own apparent in the opening week of the year? There are only so many ways to play the game, but how Diaz manages rotations and pressures will be interesting to follow. Don’t expect to see everything out of the bag in Week 1, but you should get an idea pretty quickly what he’s all about.
Make It Special: Penn State’s special teams unit has been special when it comes to kicking the ball. Now things are far less certain than they’ve been the past four or so seasons. Punting, kicking and field goals all have some performance-based questions heading into this year and that doesn’t even get back to Penn State’s otherwise nonthreatening return game as of late. Penn State has won the field position battle in many a big game. Can it do it again this year with so many new faces? To some extent this group doesn’t need to be special, it just needs to not mess up. Once it gets that part down, it can work on taking the next steps.
What Clifford Can Do: Sean Clifford isn’t exactly the new guy on the block, but that doesn’t mean he can’t bring new things to the table. Penn State just needs him to be steady in 2022 and avoid some of the head-scratching mistakes he has made over the course of his career. Clifford doesn’t need to be perfect, but if he’s reliable in the same ways he was in 2019 and can avoid some of the mistakes, there’s no reason this team can’t win a lot of games. Clifford is always going to get knocked for the player he isn’t, but that doesn’t mean the player he is is a bad one. In any case, these are the kinds of games where having one of the most experienced quarterbacks in college football should work to your advantage. Clifford needs to prove that on Thursday.
