Penn State is 2-0 after a hard-fought win over Purdue last Thursday and now a much easier 46-10 clinic against Ohio to start the season, with back-to-back wins and plenty of momentum before heading to Auburn next week. What did the Nittany Lions do well and what do they need to improve on as the season goes along? Check out the grades below.
Offense: A
That was the Penn State offense people were waiting to see. Sean Clifford was sharp, Drew Allar looked like the future and Nick Singleton finally broke Penn State’s curse of the 100-yard rusher. Penn State ended the day with nearly 600 yards of offense while 17 different players brought down a pass from three different quarterbacks. A 4-for-15 third down mark isn’t great and Penn State struggled to run between the tackles yet again but all and all this was a solid outing. Clifford managed a 19-for-27, 213 yard afternoon and was clinical on a few early drives before getting to sit out in the second half after one early drive. Singleton showed great speed en route to a 179-yard day on just 10 carries. Harrison Wallace and Jaden Dottin made nice debuts at receiver and Parker Washington led the way with four catches for 60 yards on an afternoon that saw so many different players involved in the passing game.
Saturday also marked the second-straight week Penn State scored inside the final minute of the first half as the Nittany Lions went a perfect 3-for-3 in the red zone. Overall this was a great outing and the sort of thing you wanted to see against an opponent like Ohio. Drew Allar lived up to the hype and his two touchdown passes gave fans plenty to think about in regards to Penn State’s future. The run game still needs some work when Singleton isn’t running past everyone, but otherwise hard to find much fault in this one. Honorable mention or scoring a touchdown on four of the game’s middle six drives. Omari Evans also ran a fassssst route on his touchdown from Allar.
Defense: B+
Penn State played well enough that most of Ohio’s stats came from the point of the game when the Nittany Lions had subbed out the entire first unit. This group was solid all day and started off early getting to the quarterback and never really let Ohio find a groove. The second quarter wasn’t great for either side of the ball, which is the only reason this grade is lower but overall it’s hard to knock a unit too much that only gave up seven points when the starters were on the field. Johnny Dixon had 1.5 tackles for a loss while Tyler Elsdon led the way with six overall tackles. Abdul Carter had a much stronger outing – which considering he was ejected on his first snap last week didn’t take much – but showed plenty of potential with his five tackles as well. Penn State’s defense racked up 44 yards in tackle for a loss yardage and collected five sacks by the end of the day.
This grade gets a bit of a knock for getting turned around on some trick plays but trick plays are tricky for a reason. Otherwise it’s hard to hate on a group that gives up basically no points and few yards. Ohio ended the afternoon having gone 3-for-12 on third down and averaging just four yards per play. Not a bad afternoon of defensive football.
Special Teams: C-
Jake Pinegar missed an extra point and a field goal and that’s really the knock on the grade here. Barney Amor was fantastic punting with two of his three punts being downed inside the 20. Parker Washington had some solid punt returns and showed signs of that part of the game being a potential threat for Penn State moving forward. James Franklin attributed the missed kicks to total unit failure but whatever the case might be it’s something that will lose you games down the road and Penn State can’t afford to have field goals and extra points being a gamble. This grade is maybe harsher than it needs to be but kicking is too important to get a pass.
Coaching: A
For as long as James Franklin has been at Penn State the time to get backups [mainly quarterbacks] into the game has come and gone until it was too little too late. Drew Allar isn’t your ordinary backup, but getting him meaningful snaps in the second half was among the better decisions Franklin has made in his entire tenure. That might be slight hyperbole but those snaps are priceless for guys like Allar – and so many other young faces that got to play on Saturday – and that was without the game being at 30+ point margin. Penn State had too much talent to need to make this game plan complex so this performance grade is more about personnel decisions than it was any single play or in-game decisions. Penn State was 2-for-4 on fourth down and should continue to go for it.
Overall: A
This was everything Penn State need coming off a grind of a win against Purdue. The defense was solid, Clifford was great, Allar was a stud and the running game had someone actually run the ball for more than 100 yards. There will be much tougher tests than this one in the future, but you can only beat who is in front of you and Penn State did that in clinical fashion on Saturday.
