It says something both good and bad about Penn State football that arriving at 5-0 following a soggy 17-7 victory over Northwestern felt equal parts noteworthy and inconsequential. As Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford aptly stated after the game, “I’ve been here done that. It’s the standard to be 5-0 at this point.”
The good: the Nittany Lions will once again be in the biggest games of the year. Penn State is paying James Franklin a lot of money to get his program to the games on the schedule that actually matter and have them actually matter. Franklin’s big money counterpart in Michigan State coach Mel Tucker — who signed a $95 million contract last year — is battling the opposite as the Spartans fell to 2-3 on Saturday. A reality that you might still play Michigan and Ohio State every year, but if you can’t even get above .500 beating them won’t bring home any trophies. In essence, you can’t win the big, nationally consequential games if you never get to play in them in the first place.
It’s in this where Penn State is hoping to get its biggest return from Franklin and his own massive 10-year extension. Franklin’s job is to maintain Penn State’s ability to — more often than not — reach this portion of the year undefeated and have the opportunity to play in games of national importance. And then occasionally win those games. Changing for changing’s sake a gamble that had far larger potential for downside than up.
Generally, Franklin has made good on that investment. Since 2016 the Nittany Lions have gotten to the nationally relevant games with something to truly play for nearly every year. There have been bumps in the road, the last two seasons an example that not everything goes according to plan. That aside, in the time since the shadow of NCAA sanctions lowered below the horizon, Penn State has kept its name in the conversation year after year. There is something to be said for that, even if the results feel like they’re perpetually coming up short. Better to make the big game and lose than to never make the big game at all.
It’s in the good of 5-0 that the bad also lingers as you tally up the number of times one says “if they” about Penn State’s upcoming games.
If they can run the ball, well, they might beat Michigan. If they can play defense like this against Ohio State, they might win. If they can get their special teams figured out, they could win. If they avoid fumbles, they can win in Ann Arbor. If they avoid a game in which Sean Clifford makes ill-advised decisions, they’ll have a chance to win. If Penn State’s receivers step up, they’ll be balanced on offense. If they do this, if they do that. If they, if they, if they.
That’s how Penn State feels 5-0 and yet somewhat helpless, not good enough in the eyes of many fans. Everything Penn State does this time of year is pushed through the lens of the games that really matter. Long gone are the days when Penn State winning seemed noteworthy and here are the moments when the sentence is uttered “if they do this against Ohio State or Michigan they will win/lose.” Nothing is about the moment in front of anyone but simply about the eight quarters lying in wait.
This is what is so addictive about sports and what keeps everyone watching. Bluntly, Penn State has not done much over the first five weeks of the season beyond survive Purdue and thump the daylights out of Auburn to give fans any sort of reason to believe this is the team to buck the trends against the Big Ten East’s best.
And yet, here we are, uncertain as to what might happen, able to talk ourselves into a belief that what we’ve seen the last five weeks is not definitive. “That’s why they play the games,” fans, onlookers, coaches and players all tell themselves as they try to predict the future. Of course nobody saw Penn State’s 2016 season coming, a 2-2 start blooming into one of the programs best seasons ever. So what do we know?
Well we know Penn State can’t fumble the ball four times against anyone not named Northwestern. We know that Sean Clifford has to — finally — avoid his semi-regular head-scratching mistakes. We know that Penn State’s defense has to play well, that the kicking game has to find its footing. We know that playmakers have to step up, that the ground game has to grow even more and that the defense will have to continue to backstop it all. We also know it can’t let up long third downs against Ohio State and that it can’t fall behind early against Michigan. We know that James Franklin has to push all the right buttons and that the Nittany Lions can’t treat the bye week as an off week.
If those things all happen, then all bets are off. No big deal right? And yet we also know that teams don’t change overnight and if a problem has lingered for six months of six seasons, it’s unlikely to go away in 13 days.
And yet, we all wait to see.
There is a beautiful insanity in how sports gets us to talk ourselves out of the obvious. As you try to guess how the rest of Penn State’s season will go, you try to ignore the fact the offense doesn’t score a ton of points and has rarely — aside from the Auburn game — done anything well for four-straight quarters. You try to ignore the fact that Sean Clifford has played football forever but seemingly still makes the same few mistakes over the course of the year. You try and forget that every Ohio State football game looks like a coaching clinic or that no matter how bizarre Michigan is at any given moment that the Wolverines are a real pain to beat.
So here things sit, Penn State is 5-0 with the biggest questions still yet to be answered. Did the Nittany Lions sleepwalk to this point, the last two weeks an indifference towards games they could be indifferent towards? Or was this slogging 5-0 start foreshadowing the results lurking ahead, the truth that this Penn State team is generally better than most on the schedule but not the one to finally get the Nittany Lions over the hump?
The fun part is everyone has a pretty good idea what the answer is. But the beautiful part is everyone will find out if they’re right at the same time.
