This Week in Ohio State Football: Penn State

Vo. 1, No. 10

This week in Ohio State football, you can be sure Penn State will look like a top 10 team Saturday in Columbus.

Yes, the Nittany Lions were overrated to start the season.

Thinking they would follow Michigan and Ohio State into the national championship winner’s circle never made all that much sense to me.

It was a lazy narrative put forth by lazy national writers, though that is not to say it could not have happened.

The odds just weren’t in their favor since they lost to all three top 10 power conference teams they played last season (counting Notre Dame) and had to replace their best player on both sides of the ball.

However, the Nittany Lions were 10th in the 247Sports Talent Composite entering the season, which is pretty typical.

Penn State has had the second-best roster in the Big Ten more often than not for almost 20 years, especially if we’re just talking high-end talent (The good Wisconsin and Michigan State teams of the 2010s were deeper but not as top-heavy).

This season they had lots of guys returning, and it’s fair to expect many of them to have improved.

Most notably that would be quarterback Drew Allar, who passes the look test but didn’t live up to his five-star hype in his first two years as a starter.

Certainly many players in the history of college football have taken that final step from junior to senior year, though, so assuming he just was what he was might not have been really fair, either.

Except guess what? There wasn’t anything else to unlock apparently.

Ohio high school football notes: Week 10

Of course you don’t want to see anyone suffer an injury like Allar did against Northwestern, but overall he still didn’t look any better than last season. Maybe worse.

Allar just doesn’t have the “It” factor, and by that I mean the confidence to throw the ball to guys who aren’t wide open unless maybe that is the only way a play is designed to go.

Even when the Nittany Lions came back in the fourth quarter against Oregon, the play-caller was obviously doing everything he could to avoid Allar needing to use his arm. The exception was one shot play, a play-action pass that was designed to scheme someone open deep down the middle and let the QB just put it on him, which he did.

If you asked him to just drop back and find an open receiver, he seemed pretty lost for 2.5 seasons. The same questions facing him going into the Ohio State game in 2023 never were answered.

Beyond that, the Jim Knowles hire also made little sense because he’s a fixer, the defense wasn’t a 2024 PSU weakness, and his system famously requires years to perfect.

That said…

Knowles can craft a game plan, and that extra week to prepare gives him time to come up with new stuff for the Buckeyes along with days to put it in and perfect it.

On the other side of the ball, Andy Kotelnicki’s offense might be more cute than smart, but he is creative, and an extra week should be big for him, too.

Then there is the idea they were playing with the weight of expectation on their shoulders in the first month of the season and just collapsed after failing against Oregon.

Now will they be able to fly around and play free with nothing to lose against Ohio State? Stranger things have happened.

Then again, maybe that’s just me. I’m always on alert for sports irony, and this has major potential to bring plenty of that.

I learned that from watching Ohio State basketball beat the Fab Five twice in the regular season then lose the far more important third game in the Elite Eight.

When in doubt, expect the most screwy, unsatisfying outcome is my mantra as a result.

To that end, James Franklin always came up small against highly-ranked teams, so wouldn’t it figure THIS is the year the Nittany Lions win a big game against Ohio State with him out of the way?

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Ryan Day said multiple times this week he still views this as a matchup game, which is no surprise, and this Ohio State team has come out ready to play every week so far.

Day also seemed to spend the first seven games as worried about establishing tendencies as perfecting them offense, and the Buckeyes also got extra time to study themselves and root out potential weaknesses Knowles might discover.

For those reasons, this should be a fascinating chess match as the coaches anticipate both what they have cooked up for each other and what counters they will need for the counters.

Ohio State leads the all-time series 26-14, including eight wins in a row.

Penn State won the first four (1912-64) and led 6-2 when it joined the Big Ten in 1993.

If you don’t want to do the math, that means Ohio State is 24-8 against Penn State in Big Ten contests.

This will be the 33rd consecutive year the teams play, Ohio State’s longest continuous series since the Michigan game wasn’t played in 2020, but they are not scheduled to play next season.

Penn State is 7-15 in Columbus.

The Nittany Lions’ last win at Ohio State was in 2011 under interim coach Tom Bradley, who took over in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal costing Joe Paterno his job.

The last time Penn State beat Ohio State anywhere was 2016 on a blocked field goal return for a touchdown. They are under an interim head coach this week (Terry Smith) and blocked a field goal and returned it for a touchdown against Iowa last week if you are into foreshadowing… The Nittany Lions have also blocked three punts this season, which might be something to watch since OSU special teams have been kind of wonky.

Penn State last beat the No. 1 team in the country in 1990 (24-21 at Notre Dame).

The most interesting things I heard at Ohio State pre-Penn State

Styles make fights.

As noted in Thursday’s newsletter, the Penn State defense has struggled to stop the run but is good against the pass.

Meanwhile, Ohio State has the nation’s best passing attack but is still searching for that running game.

The Nittany Lions are not allowing many big plays by land or by air, which is also interesting in and of itself.

Knowles formerly claimed to hate having a defense that could be described as bend-but-don’t break, but he seems to be doing just that in Happy Valley.

He’s also described his defense as safety-driven, and Zakee Wheatley and King Mack have some of PSU’s best Pro Football Focus grades while the interior line and linebackers have struggled.

So have their corners, which doesn’t bode well for the guys in white on Saturday.

Is Penn State as bad as its record?

There is of course no guarantee Knowles will have the Nittany Lions doing anything this week they did the first seven weeks, both because that might be wise and because he might need to stroke his own ego.

Getting schemes completely different than they saw on film is also something Ohio State has dealt with for as long as I have been on the beat because most teams can’t do what they normally do and hope to stop the Buckeyes.

Knowles is at his best as an underdog, and he is well-known for coming up with intricate, opponent-specific game plans so the bye week could be a huge factor.

Then again, we’ve already seen reports out of Central PA that the players were having a hard time absorbing the defense in the first half of the season so maybe trying to do too much would backfire.

Ohio State right tackle Austin Siereveld said they see a lot of familiar structures on film but they are also preparing for all kinds of stuff NOT on film. That in itself could have some interesting downstream effect.

Will it simplify the Ohio State game plan? Will that matter?

We’ll see. (The likely answers are yes and no, respectively.)

On one hand, I can see Day wanting to go bombs away to send a message. Never go against the family.

On the other, he might be even happier to see the running game finally take off and win 28-3 with four long, methodical scoring drives that chew up clock and send us all home before the sun goes down.

The danger for Day lies in trying to force whichever thing isn’t there.

The story of the season so far is taking what the defense is giving, so that needs to continue.

Ohio State-Wisconsin postgame thoughts

I guess at the end of the day, if Penn State’s corners can’t cover Ohio State’s receivers, there isn’t a lot a defensive coordinator can do anyway.

If I were to wager, I’d bet we see an endless stream of blitzes from the Nittany Lions that lead to fireworks one way or another.

I wrote an update on Ohio State coming out of the open week for the Associated Press and filed another tome on the much-maligned running game for Press Pros Magazine.

Press Pros OSU beat man Jeff Gilbert attended the Buckeye men’s basketball teams exhibition win over Ohio University and came away with a positive report on the new big men who figure to be a major focus this season.

Jeff also took note of Ohio State’s efforts to be on upset alert against the Nittany Lions this week.

Meanwhile, Press Pros publisher Sonny Fulks noted it was not a good week to be a big cat whether you were in Cincinnati, Ironton or Louisiana (does that mean anything for PSU?): READ HERE.