| The concerns about how Penn State's offense would continue to roll with Barkley off to the NFL, and Moorhead off to Mississippi State, seem to have been warranted. That seems harsh for an offense that currently ranks 4th in scoring offense, 3rd in total offense, and 1st in yards per play. But they ran wild over a horrible Illinois team, for 63 points and nearly 600 yards. Their 26 points against a struggling Ohio State defense doesn't look so good anymore, particularly when they couldn't hold a 12 point lead with under 7 minutes to go. What they did get in that game seemed to be 100% McSorley willing them to. Repeat last week against a banged up Michigan State team, except replace McSorley with Miles Sanders. Sanders had a 78 yard run untouched to set up one touchdown, and a 48 yard man ball run where it seems like a broke a tackle from every defender on the field to score their other touchdown. They mustered only 14 first downs, under 26 minutes of possession, and with the ball twice late with a chance to ice the game, they had back to back three and outs to open the door for the Spartans. Now Michigan State is probably vying with Iowa to be the second best defense in the conference this season, and while Ohio State has taken some criticism, it's that their defense might not be national championship caliber. They are still probably a top 5 defense in the conference. Indiana is none of these things. Part of the problem is they aren't forcing field goals. More or less, the days of shut down defense in college football, absent your total talent gap game, is gone. So you have to force turnovers and make teams settle for 3. Indiana is allowing 4.8 touchdowns per game. The only other teams with numbers that bad reside at the bottom of all of the defensive stats, Illinois, Rutgers and Nebraska. Indiana is wholly in the middle, but they aren't forcing field goals in the red zone, surrendering touchdowns on an absurd 13 of 16 trips (81.3%). Nebraska has a terrible 5% defensive success rate in the red zone, but even they are only allowing touchdowns on 60% of trips. The Hoosiers were looking towards another season in a recent run where they challenged all the big boys, but couldn't beat them. Until they ran into the Iowa buzz saw last weekend, and Nate Stanley announced his own 3rd party candidacy against Dwayne Haskins and Jonathan Taylor in the Silver Football race. This is a chance for the Penn State offense to get back up off the mat. Both defense should be well prepared as Peyton Ramsey reminds me of a poor man's Trace McSorley. I think McSorley is willing to go down field a little more, and Ramsey might be a touch more accurate, but both will run if you let them, and both have a lot of gunslinger in them, such that interceptions are there to be had. The Nittany Lions defense is playing well, their offense just dumped on them one too many times last week. You hold Ohio State to 27 and Michigan State to 21 in back to back weeks, you expect to finish that 2-0, certainly not 0-2. Penn State needs to stay on schedule and stay out of the 3rd and longs they kept putting themselves in last week. That means more from Miles Sanders. His overall numbers last week, 17 carries, 162 yards, 9.5 ypc, look quite good. Then you remember he has 2 carries for 126 yards, and things look a little different. Over the final 35 game minutes, after his touchdown run to give Penn State a 14-7 lead, he had 10 carries for 17 yards for the balance of the game. That's how to not hold a lead. I suspect this looks more like his Illinois performance, where he got stronger as the game went on. |
