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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Faith and Begorrah! (Thank God THAT’S Over!)

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Add this to the PSU Trophy Case!
Add this to the PSU Trophy Case!

It couldn’t have been better. On a balmy 18C degree day in Dublin, two foreign universities with no Irish ties played American football on a converted Gaelic field in one of the largest stadiums in Europe.  The outcome of this one was in doubt until the final seconds, tickling the fancy of the promoters, who had already pocketed their money by that time anyway. In the end, it was Penn State 26, UCF 24, and the ancient cannons of Croke Park blew out blue and white confetti while the victorious Nittany Lions hoisted a majestic trophy named after Steelers’ owner and former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, Dan Rooney.

The unlikely hero for the Nittany Lions was much maligned Sam “Shnozzola” Ficken, the Penn State football equivalent of a Timex watch: a kickin’ Ficken who takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’.

Losers’ stats-wise, it wasn’t close, but what should have been a huge advantage for Penn State was distorted by a few big plays and some sloppy turnovers. Penn State dominated the stats with 24 first downs to UCF’s 11 and 511 total yards to 246. Time of possession was decidedly in PSU’s favor, 34:07 to 25:53. Penn State punted only once versus four for the Knights. (Good thing, because red-shirt freshman Chris Gulla was a rookie playing his first game for the Lions.) It could have been much different if UCF had chosen the right starting quarterback, as you’ll see below, but hindsight is always 20-20.

So, it was close — too close. With seconds remaining on the clock, the Nittany Lions found themselves down 24-23, a Sam Ficken field goal attempt away from an opening game loss that would surely hit the much maligned Lions pretty damn hard. Penn State fans sat there crapping their pants as they watched Ficken, whose career has been anything but stellar in its consistency, step out to line up the 36-yard field goal. UCF fans, who probably haven’t followed the fickle fortune of Ficken were crapping their pants, too, fearing an almost certain disaster. (It’s easy to sit on the edge of one’s chair when one slides there.) This turkey, cynic that I am, had prophesied that if the game was close and it came down to a Ficken field goal, Penn State would lose. I was wrong. Ficken had the Luck O’ the Irish this day (how many times are you seeing that phrase used in today’s commentary), notching a perfect 4-4 FGs and 2-2 PATs. And this one was his crowning achievement. To quote an old beer commercial, “It don’t git no better’n this!”

A sturdy defense was no great surprise for Penn State homeys. The run defense certainly didn’t disappoint, allowing only 24 yards rushing. The pass defense looked better than we had seen last year, an encouraging sign, but they let a couple of plays get behind them for long gains when it appeared that they had their heads up their asses. In all, they made a couple of good breakups and were called upon to do more run support than last year’s mess, but no interceptions or earth-shattering defensive plays were seen. In spite of that, UCF’s starting quarterback, freshman Pete diNovo, was not successful at all against the PSU defense completing only three of eight passes and ending with a QB rating of 1.5. Had substitute Justin Holman, who took over at quarterback in the second half, played the entire game, it might have turned out differently. Holman was 9-14 for 204 yards with one TD and no INTs passing. He also ran for two TDs.

Guess who will start the next game at QB for UCF in two weeks against Missouri? I don’t think anyone in his right mind would guess diNovo.

Our concerns about the Penn State offensive line were on the mark, although Christian O’Hackenberg wasn’t on his back quite as much as this turkey had expected. There was one scare when he apparently twisted his knee and limped off the field, but he came back with a confident stride and assuaged our fears. So, Hackenberg wound up providing most of the offense behind this shaky O-line, sometimes running hard to evade sacks while at other times having a surprising (to me, anyway) amount of time, going 32-47 for a school record 454 yards in the air, including one pass for a touchdown.

“He was, too, out-of-bounds!!”

Approaching the climactic game terminus, leading up to Ficken’s last-second field goal, Hackenberg coolly directed a seven-play drive even as the current issue of the Penn Stater alumni magazine commemorated Kerry Collins’ 1994 “The Drive” against Illinois that preserved that undefeated season 20 years ago. For the most part, things went well, although there were some clock management issues and a couple of dubious play calls that will need to be addressed in Tuesday morning’s coaching session. Fortunately, all’s well that ends well!

Alas, the game excitement got into Hackenberg’s head and on several occasions Hack was seen to gamble with dangerous throws, two of which were intercepted. Fortunately, UCF’s offensive ineptitude kept the points off those turnovers down to a paltry three. Hack’s got to learn when to throw the ball away instead of forcing it. He better not be making such rookie mistakes as the season wears on.

The running game was another story. The Penn State OL seemed completely inept there. The troika of Zach Zwinak, Bill Belton, and Akeel Lynch combined for a paltry and ineffectual 55 yards. They just weren’t getting the blocks. Franklin and company adjusted to the OL ineptitude by switching to the passing attack early and coming back with the run at the outset of the third quarter, when Penn State had a one touchdown lead over UCF and perhaps thought they could sit on it. I guess ol’ Jimmy O’Franklin figured it was time to put this one in the can at that point and let the defense win it for him. Unfortunately, his counterpart, Georgie O’Leary, who had an annoying label hanging out of the neck of his sweater back during the game, had different ideas, swapping quarterbacks, going to the air, and ultimately coming back with three touchdowns to Penn State’s one TD and two FGs in the second half, leading up to the dramatic conclusion conducted by the Law Firm of  Hackenberg and Ficken.

Again, one has to speculate about what the outcome would have been with Holman in there the whole time. I’m sure George is crying in his beer about that. Back five months ago after the spring game, O’Leary said he thought he was going to go with Holman but he later changed his mind, giving diNovo the first start.

How to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? Ficken did it for Penn State, but for UCF Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel came up with a “well, at least we…” loser’s rationalization in this morning’s rag.

Quoting James Franklin’s post-game comment, “That’s a veteran team and veteran coach and what we did today means a lot for our program,” Bianchi opined, “In a round-about way, Franklin’s post-game comments represent a victory for the Knights. Think about it: When you hear the coach of storied Penn State talk about how much it means to beat UCF, it shows you just how far O’Leary’s program has come.”

In The Cave, we had good old-fashioned Irish bangers and mash, along with white pudding, blood pudding, back bacon, and dense Irish wheat bread slathered with Irish butter for our game breakfast. Lots of Sumatran coffee washed down the meal during the boring first half. Then the Irish coffee took over for the second half and the Guinness Stout followed. I gave the attendees each a bar of Irish Spring for party favors, and a great time was had by all.

Of the predictors on the Nittany Turkey Panel of Experts, Mike came out the best with his 27-20 PSU victory prediction that mentioned the Hackenberg factor. George O’Leary concurred with Mike. He was like,  He opined, “He’s what a college quarterback should look like. He delivered the ball on time and with great efficiency. We should have had our hands on him more, but he was the difference in the game.”

Well done, boys!
Well done, boys!

Mike’s gamble won straight up, with the spread, and nailed the over/under. The closing line was UCF – 1.5 with an o/u of 43.5. So, the “over” was the winning bet.

Meanwhile, this turkey was humbled once again, having predicted a 30-13 UCF victory and having taken the under.

K. John, true to form, has already expressed himself about the crappy officiating. During the off-season, he tallied all the missed calls in every Big Ten game, so this season we can look forward to an incisive yet highly subjective analysis of each call he thinks the officials blew, stated with the certainty that leaves no doubt whatsoever. (About what, I sure as hell can’t say!)

So, is this a good start? You’re damn right it is! This now makes my pre-season prediction of a loss to Akron look silly, but that damn running game is going to have to get in gear before the Big Ten season starts, damnit! I don’t really care about the accuracy of my predictions. I’m just happy that they’re on the right track. It’ll be an entertaining year.

Somewhere in Houston, Bill O’Brien’s Irish eyes are smiling.

 

 

Frogs Croke, Turkeys Gobble

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Croke Park Classic 2014Here we go, folks! The first outing of the Nittany Lions’ 2014 season is a couple of days and several thousand miles away.

The Lions travel to Dublin to face the UCF Knights in what is ostensibly a home game for the Knights. It’s the only way Penn State would play a home-and-home series with UCF, because if they played in Orlando at Bright House Stadium, they’d lose a big chunk of revenue. But the two canny Irishmen, old football buddies George O’Leary and Bill O’Brien arranged this fiasco and stuck us with it. So here we go.

The first Turkeyesque observation is that we’re dealing with an 8:30 AM start, US East Coast time. The 82,000 seat Croke Park does have floodlights to illuminate the field, so why the hell didn’t the O’s come up with a more reasonable hour for US viewers? How about a 5:00 PM start, Irish time? That would be noon here. WTF? It’s hard to drink Guinness Stout at 8:30 AM. You have to be in good beer guzzling shape for that.

This game will be played for the Dan Rooney Trophy. Dan, you know, is the current patriarch of the Steelers family and a former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland. The trophy is made from 4,200 year-old Irish yew trees and Pittsburgh steel that was left over from the construction of Heinz Field. Rooney at first did not want his name on the trophy, but he was eventually convinced. Said Dan:

“Being associated with the U.S. and football … and sport in Ireland, I was very much honored,” Rooney said. “Peter McKenna was the one who asked me. I said, ‘I don’t deserve that. You should get someone Irish.’ He said ‘we definitely want you because we’re going to play American football.’ It means an awful lot now. It’s a real honor for me.”

Lest you think that we might be dealing with some contrived, fugly piece o’ shit like the much maligned Land Grant Trophy, get those thoughts out of your head. This is an elegant trophy that looks like a football — an American football — and the oiled yew wood makes it a rich, football-like brown color. Quite beautiful. in this turkey’s opinion.

The game, though. What happens when the boys take the field? That’s what we’re really here to see about. Or for me to expound about and confound you about, anyway.

We have little but speculation about James Franklin’s ability to coach. The usual media wonks and bloggists are out there saying he’ll do this and he’ll do that, but no one really knows what the hell actually will go on. You see, they’re all trying to make a story out of nothing at all. They’re comparing Franklin to O’Brien on balance even though we haven’t yet seen Franklin coach a single game. And of course, the Sanguinarians are saying that he’ll be so much better than O’Brien, because most of them have already written O’Brien off as a Paterno-hater, at least subconsciously.

And of course, now we’re getting similar, Sanguinarian inspired comparisons of DC Bob Shoop to — who? — Tom Bradley! Say, what?! Last thing I want to see is a soft secondary, which is precisely how the Sandusky/Bradley defense worked. Fortunately, they’re talking about aggressive defense, too, taking chances and using the blitz regularly. They’re kind of thin in personnel, especially at linebacker, to be going full-bore on the pass and run blitzes, but they’re apparently planning to use the secondary more aggressively on running plays instead of hanging thirty yards deep.

The secondary is pretty experienced, as Adrian Amos moves back to his natural position this year. They won’t have Blake Bortles throwing balls their way this year, either. I’d like to see them make a few plays, for a change. Maybe an interception. What do you say, boys?

On offense, who’s going to step up at wide receiver now that Allen Robinson is gone? Is Geno Lewis up to the task? Of graver concern is whether Christian Hackenberg will have the time to get the ball deep working behind an inexperienced offensive line. I’ve said it many times and will say it again. This offensive line will lose games for Penn State this year. Against a talented and stable defense like UCF’s, I smell a disaster and hope that Hackenberg doesn’t spend too much time on his back looking at the Irish sky.

There’s the seeds of a decent running game for Penn State, with Zach Zwinak, Bill Belton, and Akeel Lynch all returning, but they, too, need an offensive line that can block in order to be effective. It will take a few games for that to happen if indeed it is to happen at all. Lots of freshman meat running around up there. Scary.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, UCF, who went 12-1 last year, returned nine defensive starters and 24 of 30 defensive players overall. They might lack the polished offense they had last year with, Blake Bortles and Storm Johnson having been lost to the NFL Jacksonville Jaguars, but we know by virtue of K. John’s adept scouting that the Knights’ offensive line cheats, and thus, they will be pretty effective at keeping redshirt freshman starting QB Pete DiNovo’s jersey clean.

So, thus far I haven’t said anything. That’s because I don’t know anything. After this game, if I can stay sober through 11 AM or so, I’ll know a lot more. It’s not going to be like the old Paterno ain’t going to show his hand in the early games kind of thing. Franklin better have both barrels loaded and ready to use for this one.

There’ll be some early good football weather for these two teams, although it’s raining at Croke Park at the moment. Saturday’s forecast is partly cloudy, with a high of 66ºF and a low of 52ºF.

And so, let’s get down to the Official Indefatigable Infallible Turkey Poop Prediction for this 2014 season kickoff game. But first, let me tell you that UCF has the nation’s third longest winning streak in Division I college football, after FSU and Moo U. Unlike Penn State, UCF likes to schedule its early games against teams with winning records. In fact, only UCF, Iowa State, North Carolina, and USC open 2014 with their first six games against teams with winning records from 2013. For a team not in the power conferences, that’s ballsy. I bet even the Ohio State marching band would show them respect for that kind of scheduling. But I digress.

Our panel is split right down the middle on this game, with the consensus choice being a tie. Joe,  K. John, Mike, and Toejam espect a Penn State win, while Big Al, Drozz, RD, and this turkey expect the Lions to post an “L”. Faith and begorrah, the “home” team, UCF, is favored by a slim two points in this home away from home game on the Emerald Isle;  the over/under is 46.5. This suggests UCF winding up on the winning end of a 25-22 score. I don’t think it’s that close. UCF 30, PSU 13. (PSU’s TD comes late in the game). Take the under.

The game will be carried live on ESPN2 at that ungodly hour of 8:30 AM. The crappy kickoff time notwithstanding, we’ll all be watching it — those of us who didn’t make the trip. But lest anyone be fearful that a football Saturday will end too early and you’ll have nothing to do all day, we have OSU at Navy and App State at Michigan at noon ET, Clemson vs. Georgia at 5:30 ET, and FSU vs. Oklahoma State and Wisconsin at LSU in the evening at 8 and 9, respectively. There’s a full college football schedule for this blast-off weekend!

The Nittany Turkey will be back after the game with a recap and a humble “I told you so.” See you soon.

Any comments?

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So, what did you all think of UCF’s performance against Steve Superior’s boys today? They lost 28-25, but they demolished the spread while turning a few heads. Any comments?

Bortles looked pretty good, albeit against a purportedly weak secondary. His line was 25-36 for 358 yards, 2 INTs and 2 TDs. His receivers were outstanding, and this here turkey’s opinion is that Bortles looks even more like a pro prospect. He is a natural in the pocket.

On the rushing side, the Stormster was effectively corralled, able to generate only 68 yards.

UCF got off to a quick start, as they did in our game, discombobulating the Gamecock defense. Spurrier’s halftime adjustments, probably in the form of a large foot up a bunch of asses, worked to prove that there was life in the defense after all, and even missing its star QB, was able to effectively move the ball on offense, winding up with 490 total yards. Once the Cocks got rolling, they were able to put 28 unanswered points on the board, but they got sloppy in the fourth quarter, allowing UCF to get back into the game. An interception of a rushed throw by Bortles ended UCF’s big chance, and the ensuing onside kick failed.

So, whattya think?