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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OSU 38, PSU 14

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If someone from Mars were to have seen the first half of the Penn State – Ohio State game and then immediately put into a coma for the return trip to his planet, upon wakening he would have asked, “By how much did Penn State win?” He would have been shocked out of his Size 3 Martian shorts when he was informed that Penn State wound up being blown out 38-14.

“I think [McGloin] got a little bit too anxious. That’s what usually happens with a young guy.” —Joe Paterno

The first half was a display of dominant football, the best half of football this Nittany Lions team has played all year, controlling the ball and scoring two touchdowns on what is arguably the best team in the Big Ten Conference while allowing them a single field goal. Before this game, Penn State had never scored more than one touchdown and 13 points in an entire game in Ohio Stadium since joining the Big Ten.

What happened?

Both teams made halftime adjustments. ????? ??? ?????? ????????? Ohio State stiffened its pass defense. Penn State stiffened its anal sphincter. ?????? ??? ????

Joe Paterno dialed back the big play offense that had allowed PSU to dominate the first half, opting for ball control football to sit on what appeared to be a decent lead. Time and time again we fans have seen this behavior in big road games, invoking the spirits of Bo and Woody in playing some rock ’em, sock ’em terrestrial football.

It didn’t work. This is a team that was outclassed talentwise and needed gimmicks to win in the arch-enemy’s backyard. The aggression and risk taking in the first half achieved superior results. However, if you want to play smashmouth against Ohio State, you better have the goods.

Derrick Moye, Graham Zug, Brett Brackett, Devon Smith, and Justin Brown all took a backseat role in the second half, as did walk-on quarterback sensation Matt McGloin. In run-happy sphincter mode, the Lions came out running on first and second downs, usually ending up in third and long. It didn’t help that for most of the half they were down to a single running back, freshman Silas Redd, who is hardly the guy one would choose to be the point man for the Loc-tite Steel Sphincter Smashmouth HD offense.

When OSU took a 24-14 lead with about ten minutes left in the game, Sphincter Mode yielded to Desperation Mode, which of course led to Mistake Mode. McGloin threw his second pick-six of the day, which nailed the Nittany Lions’ coffin shut. For the Lions, it would be nothing but three-and-outs for the remainder of the game, while the Buckeyes added another touchdown just because they could.

Now, I’m not saying that Penn State would have won this game if their coaching brain trust had not gotten constipated in the second half, but at least they would have had a chance. Paterno defends this style of play by pontificating that against good teams you don’t want to make a mistake that will lose the game. It turns out that in this case the gigantic mistake was coaching anally for the second half, in which there were two big mistakes and several little ones on the field to boot. By the time Paterno went back to the pass, everyone in Ohio Stadium and in the vast television audience knew that Penn State had to pass. ?????? ??? ??????? ??? ????? McGloin’s confidence was visibly shaken at that point, too, and as the captain goes, so goes the ship. He’ll probably be blamed for the loss because of the two interceptions, but in reality it was ol’ Bear-Snare Butt himself.

Rob Bolden came in at the end and threw three incompletions. At least he won’t be blamed for any of this.

So, with two games to play, the Nittany Lions still look ragged. The next opponent is Indiana, upon whom Wisconsin just laid a 83-20 shellacking yesterday. Then, Michigan State and, thankfully, the end of this tempestuous Big Ten season. Rumors are, of course, flying by all over the place about this being Paterno’s last year.

This Turkey is hoping that the Michigan State game will be his swan song. I further hope that President Spanier and the Board of Trustees set the criteria for the search to exclude anyone with close coaching ties to Paterno, including Tom Bradley, Larry Johnson, Sr., and Jay Paterno. This program needs a new broom to sweep it clean. Sphincter Mode, the soft zone (inherited from Jerry Sandusky), and the prevent defense must go. And while we’re at it, some new blood will be helpful in taking a good, hard look at the strength and conditioning program, as far too many PSU players are getting hurt on the field and, as I’ve previously noted, those reaching the NFL seem to be more fragile than other rookies. Joe will go out his way—and I hope he is spared the obnoxious treatment Bobby Bowden got—but when he does, this crumbling program needs to embark on the immediate implementation of a top-to-bottom rehabilitation strategy that will bring back the glory of dear old State over the subsequent five years. While you can’t expect immediate results from a new coach, he must immediately commence to swing the wrecking ball before he can effect a renaissance. But I digress yet again.

The Lions, now 6-4 (3-3 Big Ten), don’t deserve a decent bowl game, but they’re liable to do better than their record would suggest, just because the greedy bowl promoters know that they have a cash cow in Penn State.

I haven’t looked at any of the rags this morning, but I bet that at least one hack headline writer comes up with “A Tale of Two Halves.” Just sayin’…

Sigh

Lackluster day for offense; great day for defense!

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It is sad to this Turkey that in Joe Tiller’s final year of coaching the Purdue Boilermakers, the fans in West Lafayette are so indifferent as to leave large expanses of the stadium unfilled, lending a new meaning to their purloined concept of a “black-out.” Furthermore, it seemed apparent that Purdue played like they were going to lose and, in fact, threw in the towel in the fourth quarter when the outcome was still in doubt in everyone’s minds but their own.

On this day in West Lafayette, the Nittany Lions (6-0, 2-0 Big Ten) stretched their thus far undefeated streak a week further, surmounting the hapless and inept Boilermakers (2-3, 0-1 Big Ten) 20-6 and beating the 13.5 point spread by the slimmest of margins. They needed Purdue’s help to bring that off. Particularly ineffectual was Boilermaker freshman place kicker Chris Summers, who missed two field goals and an extra point, in other words all the kicks he attempted.

Evan Royster had a career day, rolling up 141 yards against Purdue’s inept defense. Had the game plan been less sphincteresque, he could have probably had twice that many. Instead, Paterno Road Mode decried that Royster would have to run up the gut repeatedly, even though Purdue’s defense had sold out to protect just that.

Once again, it appeared as if Penn State didn’t wake up until the second quarter. I hope these guys get over that soon! It is one thing to fall asleep against Temple, while it is quite another to fall asleep against Wisconsin, Michigan, or Ohio State. Be warned, guys! You dig a hole for yourselves with the best of the Big Ten and you might not climb out.

The Nittany Lion passing game consisted of short, sphincteristic passes. The deep ball was not in evidence at all. Daryll Clark was not as sharp as usual. This Turkey does not know whether or not to blame Clark for some of his sideline throws that went incomplete. He seemed to be throwing way to the outside of his receivers such that the ball would have to be caught outside the field of play with at least one foot in bounds. A couple of these would have required the services of Yao Ming, but when last I checked, the NBA Houston Rocket center was not moonlighting at Penn State. Methinks, though, that coaching might have been more to blame than Clark, who went 18-26 with no touchdowns or interceptions. The “better incomplete than intercepted” philosophy seemed to apply. Risk taking was minimal in this game, boys and girls.

The turf conditions were downright crappy. Players on both teams were slipping and falling. Perhaps some of the constipated game plan resulted from this. Huge divots appeared all over the field, as time after time, Royster and Green would try to cut and wind up on their ass. Here’s a snippet about that from FOS:

The Penn State players slipping all over the place, yet the field was wet? There was no rain in the area the day before the game nor Saturday. Royster and backup tailback Stephfon Green both changed cleats at halftime and seemed to have better footing from that point. Interestingly, while writers where doing their jobs in the press box after the game, sprinkler heads came up and began spraying the field with more water.

What I want to know, as I mentioned to zbeard during the game after having seen enough of this crap, is why Penn State’s Athletic Footwear Coach did not step in to make a cleat change sooner. I mean, come on, with all the big bucks Nike pays to the program for advertising, you’d think there would be enough of a variety of shoes to handle any turf conditions. So, why wait until halftime? Is that when the bell rings for getting thumbs out of asses?

Let’s give credit where it is due—in fact, long overdue. Josh Hull had a great day on defense, logging 11 tackles. After taking much heat from blogboys and mainstream press media alike all season and being defended as a “good football player” in last Tuesday’s press conference by his head coach, Josh finally had a great day and proved the old man right. Hats off to Hull. We hope you show up again next week to manhandle Wisconsin’s running tandem.

The PSU defense sparkled all over, although Purdue, as expected, was able to drive on them. Nevertheless, the Boilermakers were kept out of the end zone until the game was nearly over. Purdue quarterback Curtis Painter, who has been throwing 42 passes per game went 13-22 with no touchdowns and one ugly interception that resulted in Tiller pulling him in favor of Joey Elliott, who was able to move his team effectively down the field. But by then, it was too late.

The defensive line put pressure on Painter and contained the Purdue running game for the most part. Vaunted senior running back Kory Sheets, who was playing in the aftermath of a slight shoulder separation suffered in the Notre Dame game, was held to 59 yards on 18 carries.

On special teams, the Lions have improved their kickoff coverage measurably. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! Purdue had only 51 yards total for the three kicks they returned.

A couple of noteworthy injuries occurred in the second half. In this situation, the injured person could hire birth injury attorneys who can give legal counseling and represent their interests.Two tight ends, Andrew Quarless and Mickey Shuler, were both hurt. Their status is presently unknown. Meanwhile, Jordan Norwood, still nursing a hamstring injury, did not play. If you need help for denied social security disability claim, you can click here and find out! And to get personal injury and car accident injury claims, you can contact experienced attorneys from a reputed law firm.

This Turkey is happy about a few things. First and foremost, it is good to know that the defense is not as shaky as I thought it might be and that Hull will be a contributor rather than a detractor. Second, I think that a game like this can serve to be instructive and inspirational—I hope for the coaches as well as the team. And finally, as the Nittany Lions head to Camp Randall, they now have a close Big Ten game under their belts, reinforcing the need to come to play—every down.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Big Ten, #14 Ohio State (5-1, 2-0 Big Ten) squeaked past #18 Wisconsin (3-2, 0-2 Big Ten), 20-17. Penn State will travel to Camp Randall Saturday to face a pissed off buncha Badgers, and we’ll be talking about that later in the week. You’ll also be pleased to note that Illinois (3-2, 1-1 Big Ten) and The Juiceroo whipped the snot out of Rich Rodriguez’ Michigan (2-3, 1-1 Big Ten), 45-20. The Lions beat Illinois convincingly last week and will face the Wolverines for their Homecoming game in Beaver Stadium in two weeks.

Head coach Joe Paterno remains one ahead of FSU’s Bobby Bowden in career wins, as the Seminoles edged Miami in a shoot-out a Pro Player Stadium, 41-39. Paterno coached the Purdue game from the press box because of his painfully injured leg, but he was able to hobble out onto the field at the game’s conclusion to shake hands with old friend Joe Tiller.

I wanted to dash this off before I go up to Gainesville for a day or so. I’ll be back later in the week to squawk about P. J. Hill, Travis Beckum, and the rest of those pesky Badgers.

Magniloquent Monday

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Rank Rankings and the Return to Respectability

The USA Today coaches’ poll positions Penn State at #25, so whoop-dee-doo, we’re back in business after whipping #19 Wisconsin. What does it mean? The Turkey hasn’t had his coffee yet, and it’s Monday morning, so prepare for a fustian, stream-of-consciousness harangue. Clearly, the Wisconsin win gives us hope, some of which is well founded and some of which is road apples. Accordingly, before I launch my orotund rant, I wish to congratulate the Nittany Lions on surmounting their off-field woes and conducting a focused, well orchestrated, nose-to-the-grindstone effort against Wisconsin. Well done, boys!

This Turkey never ascribes much significance to any college football ranking south of #10. Alas, the obsessive-compulsive American sports-viewing public insists on attempting to impose order on chaos. Absent the bottom 15 segment of the top 25, I suppose some folks would lament the dearth of barroom expostulation over whether #25 can really beat #24. For example, this week the AP poll places Michigan at #24 while Penn State is the top vote getter in “others receiving votes,” whereas the coaches’ poll puts Penn State at #25 and Michigan is top vote getter among the unranked. But Michigan beat Penn State, and and and— WHO CARES!! This vacuous ranking of the vast unwashed makes for great, drunken, wistful, meaningless soliloquys by the pretenders’ well lubricated partisans in a veritable plethora of taverns from Pittsfield to Petaluma, while the ebullient patrons at bars in Columbus, Tampa, and Boston expound on their legitimate dreams of the Still Somewhat Mythical National Championship (SSMNC)—for this week, anyhow. Visions of sugar plums dance in their heads, but I digress bombastically, as it were.

Climbing out of a self-imposed shithole is the totality of what the rank recognition truly signifies for Penn State—nothing more, nothing less. The Nittany Lions screwed up two big games. Concomitant with those screw-ups, they dashed our hopes of a decent bowl game and a SSMNC (which people including press pundits actually believed was possible immediately subsequent to Notre Dame’s denouement). To some, those with perennial expectations of nothing less than the SSMNC, the season is shot, but to the rest of us normal folks, there is still football to be played. Now, the consolation prize will be a trip to a lesser bowl. With two Big Ten losses, the best of circumstances would be a trip to Orlando for the Capital One Bowl, which is a major stretch, as it would probably mean that the Nittany Lions would have to beat Ohio State, presently #1, as well as all three of the other Big Ten teams on its remaining schedule. More likely is another trip to Tampa, or peradventure, San Antonio. Yet I still hear people proffering postulates by which PSU could wind up in the Rose Bowl. Ain’t gonna happen, folks. Either Michigan or Ohio State will be going to Pasadena, and if that doesn’t happen, I’ll eat my shorts. We should be happy that we’re still in contention for a lesser New Year’s Day bowl after we screwed up big time against Michigan and Illinois. How soon we forget! At the nadir of our despair, immediately after the Illinois game, we Penn State fans, this Turkey included, feared that we would finish with a losing record or, at best, nominal bowl eligibility.

A fickle bunch of hangers-on we football fans are. Abetted by the popular punditry of the legitimate media and the freakish flagellation of the illegitimate blogosphere (whose penchant for grammatical atrocities is exceeded only by its rampant coprolalia), our emotions maintain a firm grasp on the reins of our expectations. Rationality takes a back seat to mental masturbation. We flap like a flag in an ever changing breeze, like a rudderless ship on a tempestuous sea of alternately high and low expectations. This season typifies that tendency toward extreme emotional vasillancy. Three wins over patsies and we euphorically looked ahead to playing in the so-called national championship commercial extravaganza. One loss and we throttled our pipe dreams toward more pragmatic aspirations. Two straight losses and we descended to the aforementioned nadir of our despair, crashing precipitously from our previous emotional zenith, taking dreams of the Rose Bowl with us to a place where even the Toilet Bowl in Kohler, Wisconsin seemed a stretch. Then, a win over a weak Iowa team and some of us were once again dreaming megalomaniacal dreams. Now, the ponderous pendulum of pellucidity having pivoted to a perilous point, the Wisconsin blowout has produced such a prolific abundance of euphoric optimism that I have to believe that the weekend Tostitos were laced with hashish. Ohmigod, dude, we’re #25!

In an earlier rant, I likened Joe Paterno’s press conference perfidiousness to former Federal Reserve Bank chairman Alan Greenspan’s testimonies before Congress. Greenspan was a master of obfuscation who coined the term irrational exuberance to explain the perilously flimsy underpinnings of a parabolic rise in stock prices in the 1990s. This Turkey thinks that Greenspan’s terminology applies equally to football fans’ elatedness at times. Let’s temper our irrational exuberance, folks. One win over Wisconsin does not make the Nittany Lions invincible.

The road forward is not paved with yellow bricks and there is no Oz for the Nittany Lions. It ain’t gonna be all sunshine and lollipops. A thinning defensive line, due to injuries and players being relegated to Paterno’s doghouse, coupled with some tough challenges on the schedule and the continual question mark of which version of Morelli will show up on any given Saturday (more thoughts on this below), all exacerbate the uncertainty. Nevertheless, with the mitigation provided by the big win over Bucky and Company, there is some reasonable cause for tempered optimism toward the remaining schedule. In particular, our offense appears to have made a quantum leap, given the steady improvement of the offensive line and with Morelli appearing confident, albeit stationary, in the pocket. Furthermore, the game plan noticeably loosened up against Wisconsin, giving us hope that we might actually try to win some games instead of trying not to lose them.

As a parenthetical aside relating to which version of Morelli we’ll see in the future, this Turkey believes that there is strong correlation between Morelli’s higher than usual comfort level in Saturday’s successful stomping of Wisconsin and that game’s strategic plan being much better suited to his mindset than were the game plans in his worst efforts. The conservative game plans seen heretofore in the Michigan and Illinois games doubtlessly drove young Anthony to distraction. Give him a situation in which he can throw the ball down-field all day to win the game and he becomes focused on the job at hand; otherwise, his head is not in the game. This Turkey’s psychological assessment implicates both the coaches’ ability to construct decent game plans that take advantage of the talent level, capabilities, and psyche of the players they have to work with as well as Morelli’s immaturity. Regarding the latter, I think Morelli’s lack of focus in some of the games he has played poorly was a subconscious protest against doing things he didn’t want to do—a child’s I don’t wanna. Coaches who at other times play guardian to Morelli’s hypersensitive ego by shielding him from the press and otherwise coddling him should also consider the pernicious effects of their 1985 game plan on his mindset. In summation, Morelli needs to grow up and the coaches need to untighten their asses.

Don’t stop me now. I’ve finished my coffee and I’m on a roll.

Looking ahead, we have five games left and all must be played on the field, not on paper or whatever passes for paper in the blogosphere and in the mainstream media. Indiana has an identical record to PSU’s at 5-2, 2-2, yet they are unranked. (I believe inertia has a lot to do with rankings as they’re done at present, but that’s another subject for some future b.s.) Indiana is a road game. We cannot commit the same, screwed-up errors as we did at Ann Arbor and Urbana-Champaign if we want to win at Bloomington. This starts with the all-important game plan, which had better not be thematically what David Jones of the Patriot-News aptly termed full sphincter mode. A win over the Hoosiers on the road will set the stage for a tough game with the Buckeyes the following week at home. I will not trivialize Purdue or Michigan State. Those are winnable games, only if the Lions can play as they did against Wisconsin. And yes, Jenny, we should have no problem beating Temple.

I shall wrap this up by stating that the restoration of respectability has nothing to do with a number in those screwed-up polls. Aside from the all-important BCS ranking, polls are just for bragging rights and barroom debates. Setting the rankings aside, the Wisconsin win is a stepping stone in pursuit of the true return to respectability, toward which a similar effort each week coupled with an abatement of off-field crapola will bring us marginally closer.

You done well, Lions! Keep up the good work! Go State!

(Has anyone actually finished reading this harangue? If so, I applaud your patience!)