The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Lions vs. Owls

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So, this is supposed to be the start of an easy three game stretch, in which the Nittany Lions get to take a rest before plunging into the heart of the Big Ten schedule. After all, Temple (2-0) has always been a pushover for Penn State (1-1). In this case, “always” means since 1941. That’s how long it has been since Temple has won one.

What, me worry? The only thing is that this could possibly be the best Temple team the Lions have faced since 1941. Oh sure, they’ve beaten only a FCS school (Villanova) and the Akron Zips so far, but what has Penn State done? Temple scored 83 points and gave up only 10 in its first two winning efforts. Penn State’s numbers are nothing like that through two games, but you can’t compare Akron and Alabama.

The centerpiece of Temple’s offense is running back Bernard Pierce, who currently ranks sixth nationally in yards gained and is tied for second in scoring. Last year he ran for 42 yards on 10 carries against PSU. He was splitting running duties with Matt Brown, who had 48 net yards on 12 carries. This year, Pierce, a junior, gobbled up 147 and 150 net yards and three touchdowns in his first two games. Penn State’s middle-of-the-pack rushing defense will have trouble with Pierce.

Expect some SEC-type razzle-dazzle from Steve Addazio, Temple’s new head coach who used to be a Gator. He accepted the job when Al Golden departed for the prestigious head coaching job at the University of Miami after last season. Addazio doesn’t want to wait around to build a program; he thinks he has enough talent to work with to win right now. He should be able to build on Golden’s prior successes.

You all know the keys to this game from Penn State’s perspective. We’re apparently stuck with Paterno’s ridiculous two-headed quarterback, so that is, of course, a liability. Continuity and rhythm are lost in that sorry-ass scheme. I don’t know what Paterno expects to prove, but I digress. Other than the quarterback debacle, Penn State looks better on paper and should dominate. However, there are a couple of catches here, speaking of which, PSU receivers can’t catch. Drive stopping drops will hurt. There are some significant intangibles, such as how bummed and apathetic will the Lions be after last week’s beat down. It is this Turkey’s hope that they will be looking for revenge, but egos being fragile, you never know what you’re going to get. They’ll be playing in front of 40,000 or so instead of 110,000 and they’ll have the dreaded noon start.  A positive intangible is that the game is being played in Philadelphia, which is home for Temple, but there’ll be a largely Penn State crowd cheering for the Lions.

Stephfon Green does not appear on the depth chart. Anthony Fera does, as backup kicker and punter. Curtis Drake is listed, having come back from his injury, but he is likely not completely recovered and will not play, says Paterno.

The weather should be a picture perfect fall day, with a high of 71.

And now, we’ll cap this off with the Official Turkey Poop Prediction, which is as good as its signature substance. I’ll take all the credit I can get for successfully predicting the first two games, and then I’ll admit that this one is too superladen with intangibles to be anything but inscrutable to me. So, I’ll take a shot without a great deal of confidence. Nittany Lions favored by seven, with an over/under of 46. This will be closer than the spread indicates. I’m going to say that Penn State pulls itself out of a hole late and wins this one 27-20. Take the over, but just barely.

 

Joe Spouts a Few Non-Sequiturs (Updated)

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At the weekly Joe Paterno press conference, the questions came fast and hard about the Alabama loss, and Joe even seemed uncharacteristically willing to deal with them. The only thing was that without even quoting Shakespeare this time, the venerable Head Lion was semi-inscrutable.

About Chima Okoli’s injury:

As I said, we’ve only practiced the one day. And yesterday was just to try to get an understanding of what happened to us against Alabama, to try to correct some mistakes. We really have not talked about who is going to play and exactly what we’re going to do. We spent this morning doing that.

And we’ll go out this afternoon to see what some people are ready to do. So that’s a tough question for me to answer right now and know what I’m talking about, because I couldn’t give you an honest answer on that.

About the quarterback controversy:

 I think we’ve made a decision up to a point that we want to play both of them (Rob Bolden and Matt McGloin) for a while until we find out exactly which one we think might be better for the football team and help them win.

But, right now, I think it’s a toss up. I think both of them are doing well. There again, I think I said after the ballgame I’m reluctant to have people start blaming it on the quarterback. I mean, I think we’re just not making plays.

We started that ballgame (Alabama) where we had a chance to make some big plays, a couple in the end zone, one of which would have been a tough catch, but the other one should have been an easy catch going down the sideline for touchdown.

We just didn’t it’s easy to pick out somebody and blame him, particularly the quarterback, because it’s such a predominant person. The ball comes to them and they do something with it.

But I think both quarterbacks have played well enough for us to win with. And I’m reluctant right now to tell anybody, “hey, we’re going to start this guy,” because it would look like as if I’m, like the other guy didn’t play well. I thought they both did a pretty good job, really.

I think we have to help them. I think some guys on the team have got to make some plays. We’re the same way; we go in the ballgame, second year in a row we played that football team without [forcing] a turnover. And a year ago we had four or five and we had three turnovers in this one.

When you get in a tough football game against a good team, you’re in a uphill battle all the time. So anyway that’s one of my typical long answers to a simple question. We’ve got two quarterbacks. And as we talk now, whether we have two quarterbacks a week from now, we’re going to we’ll see.

About coaching from the booth instead of the field, and the timeout debacle (and everything else but the kitchen sink):

 The timeouts, that goes back to the confusion on the sideline goes back to the fact that, again, you think your kids understand certain things.

Two kids got hurt and they didn’t know whether to go down, come in, come out. They come out of the game late. And in order for us to save ourselves five yards we had to call a timeout on the sideline. I think that we’ve got to do a better job, obviously, of making the kids more game aware so that when that happens – you’re hurt, sit down, stay there until we make a substitution for you. We’re allowed to do that. We don’t want you to be phony about the substitution, but we had kids who were half off the field, back on the field, back out. And the guys on the sidelines weren’t sure what exactly was going on. And finally we ran out of time.

So I think we’re all right there. There again, that’s an obvious thing. Here you go in the first quarter, you take three timeouts. I’m angry. I’m angry upstairs. I didn’t know exactly what had happened either. I’m yelling down at them [coaches on the field], “you guys going to make up your mind what you want to do?” And then, of course, after I had a chance to talk to some of the guys, I found out that the kids were the guys who created the problem.

So I think we’re all right that way. I don’t think that’s a problem. We’ve got to catch the ball and we’ve got to make some things happen on defense in a tough ballgame. We just haven’t done that. It’s as simple as that.

Now, why we haven’t done it, obviously you’ve got to take a look at yourself and say, “hey, maybe there’s something I as a head coach have to do a little differently.” I don’t know. But we can’t expect to win consistently when you don’t get a turnover on defense.

I guess we were almost last in the country last year in the turnover ratio, and we were allowing too many on the other side of the equation. So that’s where we are.

About how the front seven performed and what they’ll have to do to stop Temple’s running back:

 I thought we played well on defense most of the time, except for the fact that we didn’t come up with a couple of interceptions.

The only time I was disappointed in the way we played defense was when they scored the last touchdown. It looked like a couple of guys got a little bit discouraged and nobody rose to the occasion to make a play.

But I think overall the down guys played fairly well. I mean, better than fairly well. I don’t think we got blown off the board, what have you.

They have a couple of fine running backs. I think the one kid ran for, had the ball about 25 times, ran it for about 115, 120 yards. I thought and most of that came towards the end in there. So I would disagree with you, Joe, on your evaluation, if I understand what you’re saying.

And I thought that part was fine. Did we come up with an interception? We had a chance for one, on the third down and 12. We had a chance to get the interception. We didn’t come up with the ball. They took it in there.

So things like that that we have got to do better. We’ve got to change the game around on defense once in a while. That part I think is a legitimate criticism.

I don’t see anything specific in there about how the linebackers played and I see no reference at all to Temple’s running back.

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Alabama Lowlights

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What did you think of that game, eh? That first Penn State drive was a hopeful thing, give or take a time out or three. Lawdie, lawdie, Mike’s Garage was replete with unbridled optimism along with a modicum of bemusement over the clock management or lack of same. The much maligned Nittany Lions, from whom nothing much was expected in this matchup, were marching down the field against the vaunted Crimson Tide defense.

“Do you want to revise your forecast now?” asked Jackstand and zbeard, almost in unison. When I told them I was sticking to my guns, they both looked at me like I was crazy. Jackstand is too new a Nittany Lions fan to know how recent history paints an unkind picture of non-performance in big games. Meanwhile, zbeard is a crusty old fan like me, but with a vastly differing outlook at the start of each season. Zbeard is a perennial optimist who expects big things from the Nits until they prove they’re unworthy; on the other hand, I maintain an annual fecal impaction of the optic nerve — you don’t have to be Dr. Todd Sponsler, ophthalmic proprietor of The Lion’s Den, to deduce that the aforementioned condition translates to a shitty outlook — in that I want to see something from the team before declaring that they have even a chance at a distinguished winning record. (And if you’re a fan of the Nittany Lions as well as long sentences, you’re in the right place. After all, why use a sentence when a paragraph will do? But I digress.) So, no. I wouldn’t change my forecast, which you should know was Alabama 35, Penn State 10.

As I am always running late with my post-game recaps, by this time you are well aware that the #3 Crimson Tide (2-0) defeated the #23 Lions (1-1) 27-11. I should have given the Penn State defense more credit. They even looked competent at times out there. I obviously thought Alabama would put more points on the board, so with the over/under at 42, I told you to take the over. Mah bad! But if you took Alabama and gave 10 points, you would have nailed it.

The Penn State defense really did keep the meanies from giving us a good, old fashioned, behind the woodshed lickin’. I have to give some credit to the D-boys before I light into the offense and the coaches. Holding Alabama to under 30 points might sound like a consolation prize to be stuffed into a dusty closet, but it seems to me as if this defense might actually be competent.

‘Bama QB AJ McCarron probably won their version of the two-headed quarterback competition with a 19-31, 163 yard performance with one touchdown and no interceptions. Alabama head football coach Nick Saban had the sense to play just McCarron in this game, which turned out to be a wise move, unlike whatever the hell is happening at Penn State with the offensive brain trust. Phillip Sims appears to be the odd man out in this quarterback battle, and pretty clearly so.

For some ungodly reason, PSU head coach Joe Paterno has stubbornly clung to his stance that the quarterback competition (aka controversy) is not over at Penn State despite this Turkey’s exhortations to shit or get off the pot. Oh yeah, a few others besides me have been on his case about picking a quarterback and moving forward. In spite of all the flack he has been getting (or maybe to show that he’s still the same stubborn old Joe), he split the quarterbacking chores for the Alabama game — to the detriment of the offense — and maintained afterward that the competition between quarterbacks Rob Bolden and Matt McGloin is not over. Good old stubborn Joe.

As it turns out, Bolden has won the competition in everyone’s mind but Joe’s. We fans know best, as you well know. But look at the stats for Saturday: Bolden, 11-29 for 144 yards with no touchdowns and one interception; McGloin, 1-10 for no net yards and nothing else. McGloin never got into a rhythm, while Bolden had his rhythm interrupted like a Catholic couple trying to get pregnant. The gods were not kind to Bolden, either, as at least four catchable balls were dropped by Penn State receivers. Furthermore, each time the brain trust made a quarterback change, the linemen had to get used to new snap vocals, the receivers had to get used to different ball feel and timing, and running backs have to be aware of the myriad little differences brought by a change in quarterbacks. A different personality changes the atmosphere in the huddle, too. With one quarterback for the game, Alabama was out on a smooth cruise down a wide boulevard, whereas Penn State’s quarterback switching shenanigans put it  in stop-and-go traffic on a choked freeway.

Penn State averaged 3.6 yards rushing for a game total of 107 yards — not what we expect of a Penn State offense. I did tell you that Silas Redd was not going to have anything like the productive game he played against Indiana State and — Duh! — I was right. Although he looked great on that first drive, he wound up with only 65 yards on 22 carries, for a measly 3.0 yard average, with a long run of only eight yards. He did score a touchdown, though, but that occurred with 1:53 left in the game and meant only some infinitesimally reduced embarrassment for the Nittany Lions.

Showing his versatility, Bolden capped off that Redd touchdown with a two-point conversion he ran in himself.

The only other Penn State score of the game was an Evan Lewis 43 yard field goal with 7:26 left in the first quarter, after the Nittany Lions stalled at the 26 yard-line during that masterful opening drive to which I heretofore alluded. What happened there? Why did they start looking so good and then broke down in the almost red zone yet, which is a famous Nittany trick? Well, as usual, the play calling became very conservative. Very conservative. Foolishly so. They had squandered three time outs due to poor communications during the drive. (More on that bullshit later.) Perhaps they thought that calling anything more complex than a fullback dive would result in a delay of game penalty as players scratched their heads while Bolden reviewed their responsibilities in the huddle. Who knows? After a brilliant fourth down conversion to the Alabama 29, Brandon Beachum ran for two yards and Silas Redd for one yard to bring up third and seven at the Alabama 26. Bolden tried to convert on third down but Justin Brown dropped the ball, another thing that has plagued the Lions at this early juncture. In any case — heaven be praised — the field goal was good from 43.

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