Gophers at Nittany Lions - What we learned

Sigh. This was one of those games you’d like to forget immediately after you watched it. Penn State dominated us all game, particularly their defense. Sometimes you need to have to have a poor short term memory to get over these kinds of losses.

Unfortunately my short-term memory is fine, so we’ll go through this cathartic exercise of breaking down the game a bit and gathering a few lessons learned along the way if we can. Let me stay positive to start things off. The Gopher defense played hard and did as well as could be expected given that they were on the field for 42 minutes. Yeah, that’s not a typo – our defense was on the field for 42 of the 60 minutes played. They started out well enough, holding PSU to a pair of field goals, despite Weber giving up field position via another foolish interception. The long TD drive they gave up at the end of the half (Moye’s excellent catch) was clearly a result of a worn down D, that needed a blow. The second half was much the same. Given the time of possession situation, I’d say we were lucky to get out of there 20 to nothing.

The offense was so absolutely horrid that they couldn’t provide any kind of breather at all for their teammates on the other side of the ball. So I give the defense credit, they played a decent game, despite struggling mightily to stop 3rd down conversions (Penn State was 11 of 17 – ouch).

Talking about the offense is hardly worth my time, as I’m sure all of you saw the carnage that our offensive line allowed to happen. Nothing we ran worked. Our running backs were constantly savaged at the line of scrimmage, and Weber was again wilting under any semblance of pressure. And unlike last week, where Decker’s numbers were down because we simply didn’t need to force the ball to him, in this game we found out that even Decker couldn’t get open fast enough to have Weber throw the ball, before he had to dodge tacklers. Remember how Weber had some pocket-presence when he was a frosh? He’d take some nasty hits that had us gasping, but he’d get the completion. Those days seem so long ago now.

Did Fisch have a plan for the offense if trying to run the ball effectively didn’t work? It sure didn’t look like it. Were we so arrogant to assume we could run the ball on the Lions? I don’t know, but I suppose no gameplan, no matter how brilliant, can succeed when players don’t execute.

So what did we learn from our trip to Beaver Stadium? Well, Penn State’s defense seems mighty good (or our offense is conversely mighty bad), despite the opponents they’ve played. We learned that our defense plays with a lot of heart and pride, but that only goes so far, and they’ve got to catch a breather once in a while (not just at halftime). We learned the coaching staff still isn’t comfortable putting Gray in late in the 4th quarter with the game out of hand (redshirt anyone). And finally I learned that even Troy Stoudemire can be contained from time to time. I’d like to add that I was pretty impressed with the size of the Gopher contingent at the game. It looked like they filled up a pretty decent sized section. Good job road-trippers. We need to see more of that.

And irritated OSU looms ahead, and I’m sure they are expected to get things right at home against the Gophs. I’m curious to know when the last time OSU lost 2 straight games. Seems like it might have been a while (I’ll look that up later this week) That doesn’t seem to bode well for our squad, but stranger things have happened. Go Gophers!