*Warning - some profanity, but far less than the initial draft.
Coming off Penn State's worst performance since Ohio State ruined the White Out in 2007, it's time to really assess what this Penn State team is. Sure, they stand at 3-1, but honestly they haven't looked liked they (the offense) cared if they won in any of the games they've played and only through circumstances of playing series of middling to bad competition (and the defense) they've come out the better side. I hate to bring condemnation on the whole squad, because some guys are playing their hearts out, but there hasn't been a concerted 60-minute effort put on the field yet this season. We'll get a handful of series of focused offense and wander aimlessly the rest of the time. Daryll Clark has regressed horribly this year, he's not going through progressions, not squaring up on his throws and often has receivers stretching, diving and twisting to make receptions. This is your second year running this offense, how can you not have better blitz recognition or seemingly have any idea to call a hot route for a quick dump off? (Note to future opponents: when you're on defense, blitz the hell out of us every single down, because apparently we refuse to learn how to adjust.) How do you let the play clock run out in the shadow of your own goal posts to negate one of the few positive plays against Iowa? I'm sorry if it seems like I'm picking on Clark, but he's the fucking captain. You don't get to be the captain simply because you're a senior, or at least you shouldn't, you earn being a captain because you're a leader and this team hasn't shown any leadership on offense. They're rudderless. Furthermore on the play clock, what the fuck is taking so long to get the damn plays called? What are the coaches doing in the booth? Why the hell, haven't we seen more of Newsome and McGloin against Akron, Syracuse and Temple? The reason, we don't have Pat Devlin to fall back on this year, is the coaches refusal to bring Devlin in during Clark's post-concussion games last year, specifically Iowa and Indiana when he clearly wasn't himself. Yet they again refuse to give any substantial meaningful playing time to our back-ups this year to prepare them should the need arise that god forbid they may actually need to play (see: Bradford, Sam). Now comes the first road trip of the year, to Illinois, and unless someone starts putting boot to ass and get this mess straightened out, they'll be anointing the inaugural Little Caesars Pizza Bowl in sunny Detroit this December. WOO!
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6 comments:
You call that "profanity" junior?!? You need to step it up.
Let's just say the first draft read like Yosemite Sam with entire blocks of shits fucks goddamns motherfuckers pussies fucks assholes fucks and a few rage-inspired imaginary words, oh yeah and fucks. Upon further review I stripped it all out. It read entirely incoherently, now it's just mostly incoherent.
Yeah, I was going to go through the effort of writing up a review but this will do nicely. My thoughts exactly.
that was one helluva bedshitting after the first two drives.
way to play not to lose.
sunday just felt....empty.
Really? I think a little perspective is in order. Anyone who picked us to go undefeated this year before the season started was blindly optimistic. Anyone who held onto that belief after the first three games was smoking crack. The offensive line is inexperienced and almost completely ineffective. If you didn't know that before Iowa, you probably don't get the Big Ten Network. Conversely, Iowa has arguably the best secondary and one of the top 3 D lines in the Big Ten.
Taking all of the above into account, I think our performance on Saturday was just about right for how good of a team we are. The question is, where do we go from here. The team can buy into your mentality, and we'll do no better than 9-3 in the regular season. Or they can learn from their mistakes, keep a positive attitude, and with those two things and maybe a miracle, we've got a shot at winning the Big Ten and going to Pasadena. Yes, it's unlikely, but there's a lot of football left. If you feel this bad after that game I think you had unrealistic expectations for the season.
I'll admit that in stripping out some of rage language, I also took out some of the content regarding the soul searching this team needs to do (and ties back to the post's title). No one thought this team would be undefeated, but given what we had returning and the way our schedule was set up it also wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility. I've watched the first four games from start to finish from INSIDE the stadium and the loss isn't what bothers me, it's the lack of desire. In what should have been a highly charged game, the offense walked it's way through it. It's pathetic. After dominating the first quarter they took the rest of the game off, the same thing they've done all year. They abandoned the multiple sets, ignored opportunites downfield when they had time and STILL have no idea what to do when blitzed, let's not forget the ridiculous and inexcusable mental mistakes. The game 60 minutes long and if this team doesn't learn that real fast, they'll be lucky to get to Detroit. And that's the point of this post, IF things don't change and IF we refuse to adjust and IF people don't start to step up and IF this team doesn't learn to play an entire game, then 9-3 is far too optimistic
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