Michigan Does Just Enough to Win

The #6 Michigan Wolverines (9-1, 6-1 B10) prevailed over a game bunch of Nittany Lions (6-4, 3-4) in chilly, windy Beaver Stadium. Final score was 21-17.

As expected, Penn State mustered only 109 yards rushing, but the passing game was well controlled by the Michigan defense, who sacked Sean Clifford seven times to hold him to 205 yards passing, going 23-43. Jordan Stout, pressed into service now as a quintuple threat, was 1-1 passing for 18 yards.

Stout’s fake punt so titillated James Franklin that he had to try a fake field goal, this time using Stout as a receiver. This resulted in a loss of 18 yards on the ground, thus leveling Stout’s non-traditional offensive output at a big fat zero. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he coughed up the ball for a turnover.

Stout’s final stats: Field Goals 3-4; Passing 1-1 for 18 yards; Receiving 1-1 for -18 yards; Punting 4 for 204 yards.

Questionable Decisions

I shouldn’t have to write much other than the heading above, as we all know Franklin sucks at calling crucial plays. But let me say it: he sucks at calling crucial plays. In the fourth quarter after Keyvone Lee had started enjoying some success, having run for 88 yards on 20 carries, Franklin suddenly abandoned the run and reverted to the passing game, getting top receiver Jahan Dotson injured in the process and making him unavailable to play in the ill-advised 4th-and-two play that followed. Penn State had been bottling up the Michigan offense at that point, but hindsight is always 20-20, as “they” say.

Stout was three for four kicking field goals on a windy, crappy day. The overly aggressive fake probably took the place of a makeable field goal. Of course, fanboys being what we are, if the fake had succeeded, we’d be singing praise. Franklin said they had been practicing the fakes a lot. Of course, they weren’t practicing them against the Michigan defense. But WHY were they spending all that time practicing trick plays when the fundamentals are so lacking?

(I’ll reluctantly return for my take on the rumble with the Piscataway Pretenders.)

White Out, Stripe Out, Helmet Out, Bullshit Out…

Would Guido D’Elia approve? Probably. But come on, folks. Why all the bullshit? The White Out is special, and it should be reserved for big games, of which there are far fewer when the record suuuuuuuuuuucks. We’ll know we’ve reached rock bottom when the Rutgers game is a White Out, but alas, I digress. It’s like the PSU athletic marketing department is playing at being like great big adult hypesters — and failing miserably to avoid looking like a bunch of fourteen-year-olds (no offense to fourteen-year-olds, of course).

What is a Helmet Out and whose bright idea was it? I guess if the on-field action is so boring or deplorable that we need such distractions, we’re in deep shit. My cursory investigation suggests that it is largely a white-out, but with a “stripe” of blue at the 50-yard line, to resemble a Penn State helmet. Clever, eh? Oh yeah.

There. I got that out of my system, killjoy that I am.

So, this first inaugural ground-breaking earth-shattering Helmet Out game against Michigan is going to be barely noticeable because it is a noon kickoff on Saturday, when most of us are either raking leaves, returning shit at Home Depot, or washing the car. Most self-respecting students are nursing their hangover or cleaning up vomit spewed by the freshman girl they brought back to the dorm room last night. We distract ourselves with stupid patterns of colors in the stands so we don’t notice “that dullard look” on the team’s faces as they emerge from the tunnel, weary from having cleaned up after those freshman girls who couldn’t handle their vodka.

Don’t stop me, I’m on a roll!

Let’s Talk about the Game (Maybe)

Or stop me and tell me to talk about the game. Should I? Hell, I’m in the sports doldrums here because the Penguins look like shit this year, although injuries have claimed several talented players. The Steelers — well, the offensive line took several hits and Ben is getting old, but there was a bright spot in the Ravens’ loss to the Dolphins last night, so I’m thinking the Men of Still steel have a shot. (Clever thing I did there with Yinzer words, ain’t?). But butbut, you say, what about the Nittany Lions? Did you give up on them after the Iowa loss, or what?

Well, not quite. I gave up on them before the season started and didn’t believe the Sanguinarians’ dissonantly sung praise all along. How can they stay on the same field with a decent football team if they can’t run? How long have we been wishing that James Franklin would recruit some super stud offensive linemen? When you have media wonks like Bob Flounders and David Jones suddenly declaring that in today’s football milieu, you no longer must concern yourself with establishing the run, you know the compensatory bullshit has reached shoulder height and threatens to inundate the adenoids. Their solution: come out throwing and keep on throwing.

Three Things Can Happen

Legendary Texas football coach Darrell Royal once said that when you throw the ball, three things can happen and two of them ain’t good. That’s a one-third chance of success right off the bat, or right off the quarterback’s fingers, or whatever. Now, of course, my math is fucked up, because there isn’t exactly p=.333333 for each of those outcomes; other factors such as weather, windage, elevation, QB suckage, receiver butterfingers, and defensive aptitude at jumping routes enter the mix, creating an extraordinarily complex nonlinear programming problem that only Robert Thrush could solve. I’m dropping random names now. Anything but talking about losing to Michigan!

Well, all good things must end, and although I’m not through ranting — not by a longshot — I’ll demur demurely, cease and desist, stop the foolishness, and hop off this train for now. Let’s rock and roll.

No, Really!

Some have said it will come down to Michigan’s pass rush and how it is handled by the Penn State offensive line (or lack of same). I don’t know about that, but I’ll tell you one thing: Penn State cannot run the football. Thus, the only thing left to do is that thang that has three outcomes and two are bad. It’s their only shot against the Men in Maize and Blue with Wings on their Wolverine-themed helmet, as if they figured out that wolverines would be more vicious if they could fly, is to throw the ball. (Hey, can you imagine how a Helmet Out would look at Michigan Stadium?). The UM secondary is just a-ight. So, take a shot, already, Sean Clifford, weather permitting (and it might not)!

But the protection needs to be there, as Michigan does have a pair of super stud edge rushers. If this Penn State offensive line, which has been lauded for their pass blocking achievements as much as they have been vilified for their run blocking failures, is not up to par, Clifford will be eating dirt for much of the Helmeted-Out game and might well get hurt again. A bad sign is that he was sacked four times by lowly Maryland.

Besides, the only running game the Nittany Lions have been able to establish this year involved the Sean Clifford of old (who is no longer) doing a Lion’s share of the running, and he ain’t doin’ dat no mo’.

That’s all I know. If the Nittany Lions are lucky, they could win this. If pass protection breaks down, they’ll lose. Looking for that one, big EXPLOSIVE play against an upper-division Big Ten defense is like grasping at straws. This is not Villanova or Ball State. I still say they must master fundamentals and not just count on EXPLOSIVE plays. Michigan has more yards on the ground than by passing, so the defense will have to clamp down on the run. If Bloom-Off-The-Rose Jim Harbaugh takes a page out of the Bret Bielema book, look out.

Winning the Helmet Battle

Michigan brings an 8-1 record into Helmeted-Out St. Joe Memorial Field at Beaver Stadium. Their one loss was to Moo U., and it could have gone either way. Right now, that loss represents the difference between first and second place in the Big Ten East (and in the Big Ten overall). Moo U. subsequently lost to Purdue, so they sit there at 5-1, too. The Schmuckeyes remain atop the list at 6-0.

Toilet Bowl eligible Penn State, of course, is 6-3 overall, and with three conference losses, they don’t have a ghost of a chance at the Big Ten title. Winning this game could potentially mean the difference between highly desirable winter bowl destinations, such as New York, Nashville, and Lord help us, Detroit. But as I sit here with my head up my ass thinking, my thoughts go to Las Vegas as being the perfect venue for the garbage bowl of the year for Penn State. They’ve been gambling with those EXPLOSIVE plays all year. If our luck is running high, the Las Vegas Raiders could hire James Franklin to replace Jon Gruden while they’re out there.

Da Wedda

We’re getting to that fun time of the year in the northern climes when there is the omnipresent danger of freezing one’s balls to the stadium seats. I remember such a time at the Pitt game in 1964, when they had to put me on a radiator when I got back to the dorm. The weatherman calls for a shitty day in State College with a high of 44, a 58% chance of ball-freezing rain, and sustained winds of 15 mph with wind gusts to 29 mph in afternoon showers. There’s even a 12% chance of thunderstorms. Does this help with EXPLOSIVE plays? Hell no. But PSU cannot run the football. The weather could make them suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck even worse.

Old PSU Buddy Toejamashasky sure picked a shitty day to attend this game. He’ll need a Helmeted-Out rain-repellent fur coat — perhaps skunk (or would that be a stripe-out?). Remember what Sir Charles Barkley said about animals: they’re good for only two things, wearing and eating (and if God hadn’t intended us to eat animals, then why did He make them out of meat?).

Da Bottom Line

So, here we are at that feature you have all been waiting for: the notoriously fallible Official Turkey Poop Prediction, that awful offal shot straight out of this foul old fowl’s copious cloaca. Our gambling buddies have barely moved the line from its opening Michigan – 2 to currently Michigan – 1½. The over/under is now 48½, suggesting a break-even final score of 25-23, in favor of Michigan. That sounds like a viable score for a PSU-Michigan game back when these things were competitive.

Thing is, given the weather and all, I don’t know whether PSU can put points on the board. The wind, cold, and rain not only don’t favor the pass, but also screw up field goals, which aren’t that good to begin with. If the PSU defense comes out flat, Michigan will achieve success in running the ball. And I’m thinking that is how it will play out. Michigan 27, Penn State 12. Take the under.

(I’ll be back with a recap, probably a bit anxious about the forthcoming major dust-up versus the Piscataway Pretenders).

Subtitle: The Jahan Dotson Show

Not #22 Penn State (6-3, 3-3 Big Ten) explosively blasted its way to toilet bowl eligibility, beating pseudo-rivalrous, not-yet-bowl-eligible Maryland (5-4, 2-4 B10), 31-14. While I didn’t watch James Franklin’s post-game press conference because I couldn’t find the video on YouTube (and besides, its audio quality typically offends my geriatric ears), I will broadly assume that he harped on “winning the explosive play battle”, a tritely tacit acknowledgment of this team’s reliance on big plays. He doubtless talked about who won the other “battles”, but they mattered not. Yea, verily, it was the Jahan Dotson Show, without a doubt.

After a soporific first half whose only PSU highlight was a thirty-eight-yard pitch-and-catch TD from Sean Clifford to (who else?) Jahan Dotson, I had damn near fallen asleep. With the score at 7-6, only thoughts of the impending time change trauma annoyed me into wakefulness, but I digress wistfully. I’m glad I stayed awake for the second half, as the Clifford-to-Dotson connection would provide two more touchdowns and a pick-six by Ji’Ayir Brown added even more explosive play joy to our afternoon. Explosiveness. That’s what we crave, especially if we’re James Franklin wanting to explosively impress the search committee at USC.

While still erratic and obviously constrained from running, Sean Clifford could toss the ball anywhere in the vicinity of Dotson, who had usually beaten the defense and would suck it up like a vacuum cleaner, so he had no worries. Clifford wound up 27-47 for 363 yards and three touchdowns, with no interceptions. Dotson led all receivers with eleven explosive receptions for 242 yards and three touchdowns. His biggest, most violent explosion was an eighty-six yards Tsar Bomba.

Implosive Rushing

Rushing offense, as usual, was anemic, with most plays imploding for little or no gain. Franklin had said he wanted to establish the run against Maryland, but it sucked. Keyvone Lee was the leading rusher with eight carries for fifty yards. Noah Cain, a mere shadow of his 2019 “explosiveness“, wound up with ten carries for thirty-five yards. Clifford subtracted twelve yards from the running game, as he was explosively sacked three times by the Maryland defense. The Penn State offensive line is just not explosive enough to support the run, and it hasn’t been for years.

Can you tell that I’m tired of hearing all the “explosive play” bullshit from Franklin? I would hope that his replacement will have better public speaking skills and will ditch the sportscaster lingo. However, as Flounders and Jones brought out, Franklin did indeed use the word “holistic” in his press conference, a word they made light of because they have no idea what the hell it means. Well, Jones said his wife said it had something to do with vitamins, but I digress…

The Turnover Battle

In the explosive turnover battle, poor old Taulia Tagliabooboo (Franklin’s pronunciation, not mine), better known as Tagovailoa, suffered not only the aforementioned pick six, but also coughed the ball up once after trying twice. Taulia finished 41-57 for 371 yards with one touchdown and the big interception. Maryland was never able to establish the run, relying on Taulia’s arm for most of the game. He spread the ball out among ten different receivers. The running game produced a scant forty-eight yards net, which included minus twenty-nine yards for Tagovailoa.

In any case, da #3 kid is fun to watch.

Penn State, by the way, had NO turnovers, not even an apple turnover at the Halloween party. Yay!

Third-Down Efficiency Battle Continues to Improve

The Nittany Lions converted over half of their third-down opportunities again this week, a point of pride in the wake of early season suckage in that area. The vaunted PSU defense held Maryland to only four conversions in fifteen tries.

Hot Flash! Maryland Wins First-Down Battle!

The Terps had 29 versus 23 for Penn State. All hail the winners of the first down battle!

Ahhh, but Penn State Won the Time of Possession Battle!

Yasssssssssssss, the Increasingly Irrelevant Time of Possession (copyright (c) 2018, Matt Herb, BWI) battle 31:33 to 28:27. OMG OMG!

Other Battles around the Big Ten…

Oh, yeah, did you hear that the bloom is off the rose for Moo U.? The previously undefeated, #3 Spartans suffered a similar fate as Iowa when they went to West Lafayette: they got their clocks cleaned by Purdue. At 40-29, it wasn’t even close. This ignominious defeat allowed tOSU to take the lead in the Big Ten East, as they are still undefeated in the Conference. However, I believe the Schmuckeyes can be beaten. They had some trouble overcoming Nebraska’s defense, pulling it out 26-17.

The Big Ten East will be interesting. If the Buckeyes remain undefeated, it will be all over, but Moo U and Michigan are knocking on that door at 5-1. Penn State could be the spoiler for one or the other — or both.

In the west, Wisconsin, Iowa (barely), Illinois, and Purdue all won, tightening up the West, where four teams share identical, 4-2 Conference records. Apart from the Boilermakers, they are all animals: Badgers, Golden Gophers, and Hawkeyes.

Playoff Battle Implications

None for the Nittany Lions. None for the Terps. Why did you ask? Are you some kind of Sanguinarian, or what? But I digress, explosively …

(I’ll be bad mid-week for some explosive thoughts on the Michigan game. Stay tuned…)