Penn State has a 7-0 record this season and is ranked as the No. 2 team in the country, but are the Nittany Lions actually as good as their numbers indicate?
While the Nittany Lions certainly looked impressive against Michigan and were good enough to beat Ohio State last season, it takes someone who’s followed Penn State all season to know how good the Nittany Lions truly are and what makes them as good as they are.
As the Nittany Lions come to Columbus to face Ohio State on Saturday, we caught up with Audrey Snyder, the Penn State beat writer for DKPittsburghSports.com, for this week’s edition of Across the Field.
Snyder, who has been covering the Nittany Lions since she graduated from Penn State in 2012, tells us about star running back Saquon Barkley, Penn State’s defense, the Nittany Lions’ potential weaknesses and more in this week’s Q&A.
Q: Audrey, how would you compare this year’s Penn State team to the team that beat Ohio State last year?
Snyder: I think it’s interesting because the team that beat Ohio State last year had no clue what the potential was for it. That game gave them a lot of confidence. And what we’ve heard so much from Saquon Barkley, from Trace McSorley, from James Franklin in the months after that is that a confident team is hard to beat. And that was kind of the eye-opener. They go from rock-bottom when they get blown out at Michigan late last September, to the Ohio State game, and then they’re like you know what, they might be pretty good. And so really, they’ve kind of had that belief, and then of course they backed it up with the run to the Big Ten title and then the trip to the Rose Bowl.
But this is a much more mature team. They were really young last year. You look at it now, and Saquon Barkley’s a junior. Trace McSorley’s also a junior. So you’ve got these key guys with experience. The offensive line has gotten more continuity. All the highly touted guys that Franklin has brought in, it’s kind of another year in the system for them so right now, I don’t want to say it’s night and day but really, it’s a lot of the same faces that they have, just now with more experience, which is kind of the scary thing.
Q: Barkley has taken his game to another level this season, leading the entire country with more than 211 all-purpose yards per game. Has he become even better than he was in previous years, or are they using him in a much bigger role?
Snyder: For me, the biggest difference with Barkley is how they’re using him. He spent so much of the offseason working on catching passes, and we really saw that start to come together early in the season. Then we saw some more wrinkles added against Michigan last week where they had Barkley taking direct snaps out of the wildcat, they lined him up in the slot. They’ve got the most dynamic player on the field, so now it’s just how do they give him the ball? Because what they’ve found out of course is no surprise, everybody goes into a game wanting to stop Saquon Barkley, and Northwestern actually did a really good job with that previous to the bye week. Northwestern goes in there, really corrals Barkley and it wasn’t until the third quarter where Barkley ripped off like a 63-yard touchdown run. Before that, he was getting dropped in the backfield for a lot of negative yardage.
They had been working on this since camp, these wrinkles that we saw against Michigan with the Wildcat, with putting Barkley in motion, a lot of pre-snap stuff. So they went through it in camp, brought it back out and there has to be more where that came from. Because you look at offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead and what he’s done to this team and all the playmakers they have, Moorhead’s one of the brightest minds in college football. It’s no surprise he’s going to be a hot coaching commodity in the offseason. But what he was able to do with Barkley last week, I think just continues to showcase the evolution of this running back. This is a guy, every single week, he does something where you’re like OK, we’ve seen him rush for multiple touchdowns and have some crazy jukes, hurdles, spin moves in the process, but we’ve also seen him catch touchdown passes this year. We saw him throw a touchdown pass. He’s their primary kick returner. He returned a kick for a touchdown. And then against Michigan, we saw him take a direct snap out of the Wildcat for a touchdown. Everything that we’ve seen in glimpses of the guy in the past, it’s just been amplified this year.
Q: Penn State’s offense gets most of the attention because of Barkley, but Penn State’s defense leads the entire country with only 9.6 points allowed per game? Is Penn State’s defense as good as the numbers suggest?
Snyder: They are, but I think part of that is also they haven’t seen an elite offense at this point. You get Iowa, you get Northwestern but their non-conference schedule was really soft with Pitt, Georgia State, Akron. They did get Indiana, so there you have a common opponent (with Ohio State) already, but this defense has been the biggest surprise. And I think one of the more interesting stats is that Penn State has not given up a single point to any team in the first quarter of a game this season. Which you look at it, you say ‘Who are the playmakers on their defense?’ and that’s where I think it gets even more interesting.
Middle linebacker Jason Cabinda certainly would fit that billing, as would safety Marcus Allen. But beyond that, there isn’t a defensive lineman where you say this guy’s far and away the best defensive lineman on the field. They don’t have that. But what they have is a lot of depth, and they have a lot of different guys making plays.
Penn State’s defense has been really opportunistic with creating takeaways this year, that was a huge focal point all offseason, all spring ball, and they didn’t just do it lip service, it’s actually shown up here this year. But when you look at it, the guy who leads their secondary right now in picks is cornerback Amani Oruwariye with three, this is a guy who isn’t even a starter. It’s just they have this depth, and they’re not shy about playing a lot of guys. Defensive coordinator Brent Pry, defensive line coach Sean Spencer, they’ve really kind of built their resumes and done all this with deep rotations of players. And this is without cornerback John Reid, who has yet to play this year and presumably is out for the year after sustaining a knee injury in spring ball. So you’re doing this without your top corner. You’re doing this without one of your starting defensive ends, who got hurt earlier this year and is done for the year, in Torrence Brown. I’m sure Ohio State fans will kind of look at it and say like ‘Oh man, who does Penn State have on this defensive line?’ But what they have, they have guys like a Ryan Buchholz who can come in there and play. A guy like Shareef Miller who pretty much up until this year was largely an unknown, but he’s been a very productive defensive end for them. So they’ve got guys, but people think ‘Oh man, No. 2 team in the country, they must have some headliners,’ but really, it’s just moreso the depth that’s made them so potent so far.
Jason Cabinda (40) is a star of a defense defined more by its depth than its playmakers. Rich Barnes – USA TODAY Sports
Q: Outside of Barkley and McSorley, who are some of the other players on Penn State’s offense that Ohio State and its fans need to be aware of entering this game?
Snyder: One of them, and I’m sure Ohio State fans are well aware, but tight end Mike Gesicki. The senior tight end is just a mismatch nightmare for everybody. And he showed that, even against Michigan, people say ‘OK, well, what can he do against an elite defense?’ Well, he went up and high-pointed two balls for pretty spectacular catches. But again, he’s that big, 6-6, 255, just huge athlete who really can give people headaches.
The other guy is receiver DaeSean Hamilton. And Penn State, so much of what they’ve been doing, people will still say ‘Well, who’s their No. 1 receiver?’ Really, up until this point, it’s kind of been every week seemingly just about somebody different. And Hamilton’s that fifth-year senior year guy who had a big game against Michigan, but in the past we’ve seen Saeed Blacknall had a big game against Ohio State before, and this was a kid who then had a huge game in the Big Ten title game last year, was suspended for the Rose Bowl and then really hasn’t done much this year. But he’s somebody who should they like that matchup that particular week, he could go off as well.
The big storyline in the offseason was ‘Who replaces Chris Godwin?’ after he left for the NFL, and what it’s been so far this year, it’s been receiver by committee, and also you’ve seen Barkley then take on a lot of those catches. But Gesicki will catch a lot of balls. DeAndre Thompkins is another receiver who’s got a lot of speed. So they’ve got a lot of vertical weapons, but I think probably the biggest one, just because of the mismatch and the size/speed differential, is Mike Gesicki.
Q: On paper, it doesn’t look like the Nittany Lions have many weaknesses. Are there any reasons for concern that could potentially get exploited in this game?
Snyder: Penn State’s offensive line has been under a lot of scrutiny this year, but they’re coming off of what was most likely for this offensive line their best game of the year, which is really bizarre, because prior to the Michigan game, Trace McSorley had been sacked a total of 10 times in the previous two games. So it was really an issue, and against Northwestern, they really struggled to run the ball. So you say ‘OK, well, you’ve got Saquon Barkley back there, what in the world?’ And really, this year, there aren’t that many new faces on this offensive line, so the fact that they were struggling was strange, but I think it was also because a lot of teams are loading the box, and when they load the box, not only is it to stress Barkley and try and bring him down but it’s also putting extra stress on your offensive linemen. So all the motion stuff that we saw against Michigan pre-snap with Barkley and as far as the Wildcat looks, I think that really went a long way as far as helping this offensive line out. But then, when they were asked to hold up their protection, they were able to deliver those chunk plays down the field, not just the 16-20 but moreso the 35-plus-yard plays, which they haven’t had as many of those up until this point. So I think the offensive line is certainly an area to look at.
Penn State’s field goal unit has been a bit of a mess this year. Kicker Tyler Davis was automatic last year, but he was 6-of-13 heading into the Michigan game and then they didn’t have a field goal against Michigan. But they’ve had protection issues. You’ve got a new snapper this year, a new holder. Against Iowa, they had a field goal blocked. Then they had one blocked the week prior. So you look at a game like this that’s supposed to be pretty tight, and while Penn State was fine on extra points against Michigan, you still have to wonder if something as minuscule as that could come back to bite them in a big-time game.
Q: What do you think are the keys to this game for Penn State?
Snyder: Really, I think a big part of it for either of these two teams is coming out and kind of setting that tone early. We saw Penn State play from behind so much last year and they were successful in doing so, but the challenge of that and trying to do it on the road, I just am not so sure. We’ve seen this Penn State offense go through lulls. We saw it against Northwestern, we saw it against Indiana where they struggle to stay on the field. This isn’t your typical ground-and-pound, ride-out-the-clock kind of thing. If you throw this offense out of rhythm, if you’re keeping Saquon Barkley on the sideline, that’s the goal for every team. So I think if Penn State can come out, get ahead early, that would kind of take some of the pressure off of them.
This defense has bailed out the offense moreso than the offense bailing out the defense through these first seven games, which isn’t what any of us expected up until this point. But the difference has been this defense being able to create takeaways. If they can’t create takeaways, can they still find ways to get stops? We saw that pop up in the first half against Michigan where it was a much tighter game, when Michigan came back with 13 unanswered points after Penn State jumped out to that 14-0 lead. So I think you do have to wonder, can they keep up the takeaways at this rapid pace, because the numbers right now are through the roof (18 in seven games), but also like I said earlier, they haven’t given up a point in the first quarter, which has allowed this offense to kind of get its footing. But I’m not so sure if Penn State is a team that can play from behind this year just because we really haven’t seen that, and your margin of error decreases in games like this. Penn State has been really good as far as not turning the ball over and those kind of things, but you make one or two mistakes in a game like this, and it’s certainly going to cost you.
