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 on the Road at Illinois

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Fighting IlliniHere’s something new—a Big Ten road game in which Penn State is a three-point favorite. Well, not so new. Didn’t come out too well the last time we had that situation, did it? Accordingly, let’s try not to underestimate Illinois (3-1, 1-0 Big Ten). They’re not the non-pugilistic Illini of yesteryear.

Are they still the “Fighting Illini” or just the Illini? Has the NCAA succeeded in cleansing their nickname and banishing their mascot, Chief Illiniwek? I don’t know, but see my commentary last year if you want some background on this ridiculous crapola. Last year’s game, by the way, wound up in the “W” column for Dear Old State, being homecoming and all. The final score was 26-12, but it was a lot closer than that score suggests.

Illinois head coach Ron Zook, after having been summarily run out of the Sunshine State, has done one helluva job of putting a team together at Illinois. They have an excellent running game and a good defense. Their weaknesses are the kicking game and the passing offense.

So, let’s start by predicting what Penn State’s offense will look like. Um, it will look pretty much like last week’s. There’s a difference, though. Illinois has a competent pass rush, and might be in Morelli’s face more than Michigan was. (It was amazing that our inept offensive line protected Morelli as well as it did, but that was more due to the fact that Michigan sucked than that our line performed above itself.) In any case, we’ll see the running game (or lack of same) featured once again, which pretty much means no offense until the second half. And if Morelli takes his usual six seconds to find a receiver to throw to, we’ll see a lot of rushes and sacks. (Can it really be called a “rush” if he’s sitting back there with his thumbs up his ass not seeing the field? But I digress.) So, plodding along, Penn State will either dig a hole for itself or exit the first half with a slim lead. Ho hum. Same old shit.

Meanwhile, Illinois’ offense is built around a serviceable running game. Juice Williams is a good option quarterback who can burn opponents with the run and Rashard Mendenhall is one of the top tailbacks in the Big Ten. Williams was a green freshman last year, and we kept him corraled, but Mendenhall was unstoppable, with 14 carries for 161 yards and a touchdown. Last week, he lit up Indiana for 214 yards, and he’s rushed for 536 yards thus far this season. He’ll be getting a lot of carries against Penn State, as Zook & Co. have undoubtedly watched the films of the Mike Hart ballet from last week. Of course, if they did, they’ve seen that Hart had to work hard to grind it out against the excellent Penn State front seven, and the same will apply to Mendenhall. The yards gained will not be easy ones, and he’ll need to have at least 100 of them to do enough damage to put this game in jeopardy. Williams, of course, is slippery and tricky, which can cause trouble if this defense doesn’t stay at home or overcommits. However, this Turkey thinks that the Juicemeister is in for a long, painful day.

To be honest, this game worries me, primarily because it is now clear that our offense sucks beyond mere suckage. At the Tuesday press conference, Paterno wouldn’t say whether Austin Scott would start—he was droning on about Scott having been patient and earning his chance to play. Well, hell, what does he have to do to un-earn that chance if three fumbles in two games doesn’t do it for him? So, we’ll see either Scott or Kinlaw doing the usual thing unless Illinois should happen to get lucky and score early. Illinois’ best hope is to shut down the running game, such as it is, to force Morelli to throw. (Never thought we’d be so weak at the passing game with big-arm Morelli and those vaunted receivers, did you? Hell, we couldn’t even blame last week’s screw-ups on the offensive line; Morelli underperformed all by himself.) This has the smell of a close, low scoring game, and I’m not even sure which way it will go. My opinion of our offense has fallen precipitously in the past couple of weeks, leading to a lack of confidence. Once again, I hope they prove me wrong.

And now, the Official Turkey Poop Prognostication, a regular feature of this column, and usually wrong. But what the hell—everyone makes predictions. We all know how that game works. You get it right and bragging rights accrue to you. You mouth off and let ’em all know how right you were. You get it wrong and you shut up. You disavow any knowledge of the prediction. You minimize your screw-up and move on. Anyhow, I can no longer predict any final scores in which Penn State’s point production gets out of the teens. The offense just seems that piss poor to me. So, here’s my no-risk prediction for this game. Penn State 16, Illinois 12. (I hope the damn offense can manage to score 16 lousy points—I mean, even Syracuse put 20 on Illinois! Sheeeeeit.)

This is Senior Leadership

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I’ve been told that I’m too hard on Morelli, because he can only do what his coaches tell him to do. Furthermore, I’ve been told that those coaches have “ruined” him. However, in order to ruin something, there has to be something to ruin. Get what I mean? A rifle arm and a cadre of vaunted receivers is going to waste here, and the guy with the arm has to bear a fair share of the responsibility for his own conduct and level of play.

If we would have beaten Michigan, it would have shut a lot of grousing mouths about the coaching, but Morelli’s performance on the field would have spoken for itself. He doesn’t shine as an individual performer, but moreover, he is not providing leadership appropriate to his being elected a captain. One has to wonder whether Paterno manipulated the selection of this year’s captains, as Phil Grosz suggested.

Morelli has had his share of maturity problems at PSU from the start. I guess that goes with the territory when you’re a young guy who has been told how great he was all the way through high school. His freshman year was the time for him to get that out of his system but as you’ll see below, apparently he hasn’t. I suppose it can be argued that coaches function in loco parentis, and share some of the responsibility for Morelli’s retarded emotional development. In that regard, the coaches should be blamed for Quarless’ and Harriot’s off-campus underage drinking and Scirrotto’s Midnight Melee at the Meridian II, too. Not likely. These kids are in college now and they are old enough to know better. They must be held directly responsible for their nefarious conduct and not shielded by placing the blame on incompetent coaching.

Morelli seemed to not have his head in the game at Michigan Stadium. He didn’t take care of the ball deep in his own territory, and handed Michigan a touchdown. He missed Deon Butler who was wide open, denying us a score. Any of the McCabe Sisters could have made that throw. He seemed uncomfortable and flustered at times in the pocket. What is troubling this guy? Is it the coaching? Is he just a schmuck? Is his poor performance a rebellion against the coaching schemata? Yeah, that would be a very mature approach, now wouldn’t it?

I suppose you’re wondering what got me going here. Well, I’ll tell you. Stewart Mandel’s mailbag on Si.com yesterday bore the following comments from a Michigan fan:

“I was at the game right behind the PSU bench cheering for Michigan with my brother in law who is a PSU fan. We could not believe it when the PSU starting QB was yelling at fans during the game. The more the fans got on him the more he taunted us back. At one point he was on the phone with a coach and he was trying to listen but was gesturing to us rather than really focusing. The sad time was when he told one fan who was riding him hard to come on the field and say that. Joe Pa was in the game. His coaches were in the game. I am a UofM fan and football fan. WHen your QB is more concerned with the fans rather than the game maybe he should look elsewhere for leadership. Coaches had to tell him and another starter to ignore the fans and play ball. Not a coaches fault his kids do not understand that games are won on the field. Play calling was ok but his players just didn’t execute. One player was wide open and the QB just did not look his way. The last drive had one Michigan reception that the PSU coaches told the corner to watch and that play he ‘forgot’ because that was the route they ran. The sacks were just blown assignments. One thing that got me though and i will leave on this note is how can the PSU QB be laughing while walking the sidelines when he played that badly. His WR were open. Thank god he was too busy yelling at us in the stands to see them. If you do not believe me watch the tape LOL. All the fans commented after the game that they have never seen a player become so obsessed with the fans he would have conversations with them!!!”

Can you believe that? OK, so the comment was made by a Michigan fan, so it is undoubtedly and understandably biased. On the other hand, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If any part of this is true about Morelli, he should be sitting for the Illinois game. (Yeah, like that will happen.)

Obviously, a college football team cannot go undefeated every year. (Even Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma teams in the 1950s eventually lost one.) So, there will be losses. Losses always hurt us fans—we who live vicariously through our teams and are validated by their successes. So, if we have to lose a game, the blow is softened if we know that each player gave his best effort; any suggestion that someone is out there screwing off tends to piss me off royally. I wouldn’t condone that taunting crap if it took place in the Temple game with Penn State up 79-0 in the fourth quarter, let alone in the biggest game of the year whose outcome was in doubt up to the final minute or two.

Is this senior leadership?

I Guess Joe Didn’t Get the Letter

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We tried. I don’t think there was a single sports writer or bloggist on the Penn State beat who didn’t at one time or another exhort Paterno to shitcan the expected game plan and do what Appalachian State and Oregon did offensively in their winning efforts over Michigan. Alas, Joe did not listen. From the opening series of this losing performance, it was clear that it would be the same old, conservative game plan.

In case you had your head in the sand today, the final score was 14-9, as #10 Penn State was unable to put the ball in the end zone. Michigan had one legitimate touchdown and one handed to them by Morelli, when he failed to protect the ball in the pocket deep in his own territory. Furthermore, after playing the typically lugubrious offensive game we have come to expect in the first halves of this year’s games thus far, Penn State’s offense woke up and impressively conducted a third quarter march down the field—which also ended in a lost fumble, this time courtesy of our mediocre starting running back, Austin Scott. Those two mistakes, along with Morelli’s generally inaccurate throwing, lost the game for the Nittany Lions.

We wanted to know how we stacked up against quality opposition, inasmuch as the first three games, all won by Penn State, were against the sob sisters of the Division Formerly Known as I-A. We found out. We suck against quality opposition.

This time, we cannot blame biased officiating. From this Turkey’s perspective, the calls were fair and the officials did a good job overall. There were close ones, but as many favored us as favored the Wolverines. (I’m sure some writers will bitch about something, like whether Hart was really in the end zone or not on Michigan’s fourth quarter touchdown or whether the pass interference call in the end zone was improper, but this Turkey doesn’t play that loser’s game. So grow up and realize that it’s not the officiating that is beating Penn State—we can do a good job of screwing up a game all by ourselves!)

We also knew in advance exactly what Michigan’s game plan would be, yet we couldn’t stop Mike Hart from gaining 153 yards. Our vaunted rushing defense was predictably burned. The secondary was not spared, as freshman quarterback Ryan Mallett went 16-29 for 170 yards. Michigan dominated time of possession and had 25 first downs to Penn State’s 14.

So, Michigan is back, our defense isn’t as great as we keep crowing, and we can’t get off the conservative game plan. I guess there’s no hope for that, as long as Paterno is around. However, this is the fourth game of the season and Morelli and Scott are seniors. Why the hell are they out there making rookie mistakes?

Our offense basically sucks. We have an immobile quarterback whose head is not in the game, who can’t hit receivers, and who shoots himself in the foot by not taking care of the ball. We have a primary running back who fumbles the ball in key situations. Hey, Austin Scott—stop feeling sorry for your ass and look across the field! There’s a guy there wearing #20 who hasn’t fumbled in over 900 carries. What the hell is your excuse?

So, yeah, how many of you out there were praying for the defense to score some points because the offense couldn’t? Come on. Admit it, damn it! Man, do I ever hate it when it has to come to that!

I think that the Nittany Lions could have won this game if they had taken care of the ball. That’s a simple thing to ask. It’s drummed into their heads at every practice. And in the case of the two fumbles lost in this game, they weren’t exactly forced out. These were strictly the result of careless ball handling, sloppy play, and having head up the ass instead of in the game.

And Quarless, being a sophomore, is somewhat forgivable for not making the play in the fourth quarter that would have kept a promising drive alive, but just barely. As ABC/ESPN’s intrepid Paul McGuire said, Quarless has to make that play, not just stand there waiting for the ball to hit him in the belly.

So it came down to who had the fire, who wanted it more, and who took care of the basics. That was clearly the Wolverines on all counts.

The Nittany Lions are a middle of the pack Big Ten team with a decent defense and some reasonably good special teams play. There is spotty talent on offense, which is offset by conservative coaching and unforced errors. In particular, a talented receiving corps lies fallow because Morelli, who seemed so promising when he was recruited, still throws anywhere but on-target. And, at the risk of being accused of beating on Austin Scott, need I say anything more about him? The offensive line sucks; without it, there is no consistency in the offensive effort. So, no, sorry. This is not an elite team by any stretch of the imagination. With all due respect to those who proclaimed it invincible after the first three games, your heads weren’t screwed on right. It was a quick and undeserved trip to the top 10; it will be a long time before this team sees anything close to #10 again this season.

Let my PSU negativism not detract from the performance by the Victors. They were nearly perfect, and their freshman quarterback, Ryan Mallett, not only played coolly and effectively in a big game but also seemed to be having great fun out there. His play made me jealous. Michigan has two talented quarterbacks, and we’re stuck with Morelli. Well, we’re stuck with Joe playing Morelli. We actually do have two other promising quarterbacks. But past behavior strongly suggests that Paterno will not sit Morelli for anything short of an injury. He’s a senior and it is his turn. Nevertheless, his bad play made Mallett look like Tom Brady, and I’m sick and tired of this crap, but I digress. Mike Hart had a perfect game, too, wearing down a pretty good defense. Austin Scott should learn from his example. Perhaps it will do him well in the insurance business or whatever his non-football career will be when he leaves Happy Valley.

Next week, we’ll have our hands full with Juice Williams and an up-and-coming Illinois team (formerly and possibly still known as the Fighting Illini) that desperately wants to kick the Lions’ ass on their home turf. If Penn State keeps playing like we saw them play today, if our guys come out with no fire or desire, if they can’t generate any offense in the first half, and if they can’t hang onto the ball, they’ll likely lose this one. I’ll be back later in the week with some irreverent comments about the game and our chances in it.