Column: In win at Michigan, Penn State embraces reality over expectations
In James Franklin’s memory, the identity of the Penn State football program he’d fought to shape was recently formed.
In the context of its 134 seasons, the head coach is correct.
Handed the impossible circumstances of a sanctions-saddled Penn State football program in 2014, the Nittany Lions were not equipped for success. A litany of personnel handicaps prevented anything that could qualify as good football, every game against every opponent representing its own set of challenges.
But through each of those circumstances, enough mettle was established to create consistently competitive games, win or lose, ultimately securing back-to-back 7-6 seasons before breaking through for an unprecedented run of success in 2016.
Faced with a wholly different set of circumstances and hurdles this year, though, Franklin and the Nittany Lions had not yet been able to find the same modus operandi through the first five games of the 2020 season.
Until Saturday.
“We're gonna watch the tape and there's gonna be a lot of things that we got to get cleaned up and corrected,” Franklin said following Penn State’s 27-17 win at Michigan, “but we battled, and we made plays when we needed to make plays.
“We just played gutsy. That's who we've been. There were just so many examples today of who we've been for seven years now, I'd say. We found ways to do it today. The earlier games, we didn't do that. But we made a play when we needed to make a play.”
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In many ways, Saturday’s performance represents a philosophical turning point of a program finally coming to grips with its identity in an otherwise forgettable season.
Entering the year ranked in the top ten nationally with expectations to match from the head coach filtering through his staff and down through its players, all despite the obvious challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout, the Penn State football program was determined to build on its surprise 11-2 performance in 2019. But from the onset, be it the opt-out of star linebacker Micah Parsons, the crushing emotional blow of Journey Brown’s unexpected hypertrophic cardiomyopathy to force his untimely retirement from the game, the first-series season-ending injury to Noah Cain, the uncharacteristic turnovers at Indiana, the Devyn Ford fourth-quarter touchdown snafu, to the debatable Michael Pennix pylon-diving two-point conversion, the Nittany Lions were at no point the team they originally expected to be.
At quarterback, Sean Clifford transformed from a quality first-year starting quarterback into one consistently forcing the issue, making critical, backbreaking errors as a result. So problematic were the performances that midway through a 30-23 loss at Nebraska, Penn State’s staff had no choice but to send the starter to the sidelines. The offensive line struggled to speed-learn the techniques of new assistant Phil Trautwein. True freshmen receivers were catapult into the starting lineup due to unforeseen circumstances.
On the defensive side of the ball, a similar affliction as Clifford's consistently prevented the Nittany Lions from performing to their expectations. Reiterating an oft-repeated refrain, the phrase “do your job” was the players’ way of acknowledging that inter-unit trust was low. Wanting desperately to make plays, to live up to their collective expectations, the Nittany Lions found themselves exiting the framework of the defense to their detriment as opponent-after-opponent generated big plays against their lapses.
The result was a program stunned by a 36-35 overtime loss at Indiana, then bludgeoned by Ohio State as the aspirations and expectations of a snakebitten 2020 season evaporated, and the disappointment showed through the ensuing three weeks against Maryland, at Nebraska, and against Iowa. The last winless team in the Big Ten, Penn State’s opportunity to reverse the trend on the road against a Michigan team coming off a triple-overtime win last week at Rutgers appeared bleak.
A program riddled with adversity this season, one simply not equipped to be great due to a multitude of circumstances beyond its control, the Nittany Lions produced an attack in which it finally came to terms with its reality.
Handing the reins of the offense back to Clifford, the Nittany Lions mixed a power running game behind freshman backs Keyvone Lee (22 carries for 134 yards and a touchdown) and Caziah Holmes, and a patient, plodding passing game (17 of 28 for 163 yards with no interceptions). Clifford no longer forced it, either on the ground or through the air, and the Nittany Lions were rewarded with their first game without a turnover.
And on defense, though gashed by a big Hassan Haskins 59-yard carry in the first quarter and a string of Blake Corum carries in the fourth quarter to create a 20-17 game, the Nittany Lions managed to do their jobs with enough frequency to limit the Wolverines throughout.
On the whole, they weren’t flashy and no individual performance is likely to earn a Big Ten Player of the Week nod, a severe departure from the successes that have defined the past four seasons in the program. But for the first time in 2020, the Nittany Lions were playing a brand of winning football that had to this point been wholly elusive.
“We've been talking about it for weeks that we needed to start fast and I think we all just decided that it was time that we had to actually do it instead of just talking about it,” senior center Michal Menet said of the Nittany Lions’ 10-play, 75-yard touchdown possession to take an immediate 7-0 lead. “I think it just helped us get our confidence back a little bit, help us gain a little bit of momentum, and we just kind of went from there.”
Linebacker Ellis Brooks echoed the sentiment on the other side of the ball in a performance that limited the Wolverines to just 286 yards of offense and 14 first downs.
“That's something that we've been preaching since the offseason, that no matter what the circumstance is, you take the field and play Penn State defense,” Brooks said. “There's a brand of defense that you go out there and play, whether it's the first snap, last snap, first quarter, or fourth quarter. Play hard football from start to finish.”
No point in the game encapsulated the role reversal greater than a crucial stretch in the fourth quarter.
Taken aback by Haskins’ 2-yard touchdown in the final frame’s opening minutes, the Nittany Lions calmly strung together a 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to retake a 10-point advantage they wouldn’t relinquish the rest of the way. In it, Clifford twice completed gritty third-down passes to Jahan Dotson, eventually setting up Will Levis’ 2-yard score.
A major test of poise passed by the Nittany Lion offense, the defense soon responded in kind with two clutch plays of its own. Forcing Michigan into a third-and-10 at its 44-yard line, Daequan Hardy’s strip-sack on quarterback Cade McNamara appeared to be the game-turning variety that had been missing through much of the season to that point. The fumble careening out of bounds, a heady play by defensive end Shaka Toney popped the ball back into the playing field and the hands of Jayson Oweh who corralled it.
An officials’ review of the play deemed otherwise, though, insisting that Toney’s batting of the ball was illegal.
“At first, (I was) confused because, I mean, I thought it was a heckuva play for him to knock that ball back in and us get on it,” Brooks said. “But after that... that's really how we approach it like the circumstances just didn't matter. We make our circumstances. We knew that we could go out there and get another stop, and it was on us, and that's what we want at the end of the day.”
With Michigan holding possession in Penn State’s territory, it was then that the Nittany Lions stood firm in pushing back quarterback Joe Milton for no gain on fourth-and-1 at the 37. Effectively ending the Wolverines’ chances at a comeback, Penn State’s offense then drained the clock for 10 plays and 5:37 on the game clock.
“There have been things that would have put us in a rut. We would have had a hard time fighting back through that when it doesn't feel fair, but life isn't fair sometimes,” head coach James Franklin said. “You just got to find a way to battle through it and we did that today. It was just great to see.
"They stood in the corner and they took body blows and headshots, and they kept swinging. I'm really, really proud of the guys.”
In a completely unpredictable and largely unsavory season that has been full of those body blows and headshots for Penn State, at a moment when relenting becomes a more natural response with each passing week and loss, the Nittany Lions might not have been Saturday the great team they’d envisioned before the year's start. Simply solid, the pretense of anything more than competition long gone, the group of Penn State players, in this bizarre year, finally learned how to win.
If recent history is to be any guide, that just might be a more beneficial transformation than even they realize.
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