Penn State football report card: Grading the win over Villanova

Penn State has finished September with a perfect 4-0 record, which is something to reflect on considering many did not expect the Nittany Lions to do so.

Head coach James Franklin's team has won in a variety of ways: On the road, at home, when the offense struggled in some areas, when it was explosive in all of them, and all kinds of things in between while the defense was stout throughout.

Saturday's 38-17 triumph over Villanova in front of 100,000-plus fans at Beaver Stadium may not have been as pretty as some fans hoped it would be, but a win is a win, and it marked an important learning opportunity for the blue and white.

"We're going to coach hard on Sunday, the meetings will be hard on Sunday," Franklin said. "To me, if we have the team that I think we do, they want that. They want us to coach them hard and make the corrections.

"Again, I don't want to do it after a win, but there are things that we got to get fixed and get fixed quick. We got a really good football team coming in this week, and we got to find a way to get better in the areas that we're in weak right now, and that's on offense, defense, and special teams."

Let's hand out the grades.

What should we make of this contest?

Villanova frequently stacked the box, which made running a challenge, but then again, that's been a consistent theme for four weeks no matter who the opponent is and regardless of what kind of game plan they have.

John Lovett led the backs with 11 carries for 45 yards, and in total, the rushing attack mustered a mere 80 yards on 34 attempts, including a horrific 17 carries for 18 yards in the first half. All that said, it should be noted that Tyler Warren did score as a wildcat rusher again.

Penn State did take advantage of the Wildcats' pass defense, which has been a staple for Mike Yurcich's offense to date. They exploit teams when they want to take something away, and Sean Clifford and the pass game did exactly that.

The Nittany Lions had their most 50-plus yard plays in a contest since 2013 in the win. Jahan Dotson and Parker Washington both had 52-yard touchdown receptions while KeAndre Lambert-Smith did most of the work on an 83-yard pitch and catch for a score that featured about 70 yards of KLS running after the catch.

Penn State has 509 yards of total offense and Clifford was 19 of 26 for 401 yards, four touchdowns, and an interception that wasn't his fault. Washington and Dotson both eclipsed 100 yards (148 and 117, respectively) and 10 different players caught a pass while backup quarterback Ta'Quan Roberson finished three of five for 28 yards.

The bad side of the numbers game is that the Lions were a brutal 4 of 12 on third down, one of two on fourth down conversion attempts, and gave up three sacks.

All told, the numbers don't tell the whole story here, as a lot needs to be cleaned up before a primetime meeting with Indiana next week. The name of the game is outscoring your opponent, though, and PSU did that en route to a win.

It was another fun day to watch Brent Pry's defense.

The Nittany Lions swarm to the football unlike any unit we've seen in recent years, and they have a bunch of ballhawks in the secondary.

Safety Ji'Ayir Brown had an interception and also one that was negated by a personal foul. Arnold Ebiketie, P.J. Mustipher, and Coziah Izzard each recorded a sack, and eight Nittany Lions had at least three stops on the day.

So why not a higher grade?

The backups didn't perform as well, and we're grading the entirety of the unit here. In the fourth quarter, Vilanova scored twice as Rayjoun Pringle slipped behind corner Kalen King for a 57-yard score before Wildcats' quarterback Daniel Smith found Pringle again with 90 seconds left to reach the final margin of victory.

Penn State still has one of the nation's best defenses, and the best part to me about the first four games is the number of reserves who have received quality reps. That's going to help a lot in October and November, even if things don't always go according to plan.

The only complaint here is that Jordan Stout finally failed to boom a touchback, as he sent one kickoff out-of-bounds. The do-everything specialist did kick a handful of them, them, though, and punted four times inside the Villanova 20. He did miss a field goal, albeit a 53-yarder, and made one from 29 yards out.

Franklin admitted the team wasn't in the perfect state of mind for this one, which is understandable considering the caliber of opponent they faced prior to this one, but that's on the coaches to have their guys ready to go, fairly or not.

Penn State did do a nice job of getting its backups in on offense as soon as possible, and there were no time or game management mistakes. But the performance overall knocks this grade down.

Penn State did not join the long list of FBS teams that have been knocked off by FCS visitors in recent years, and it left this contest mostly healthy.

Are there things that absolutely must improve in the week's ahead? You bet.

But, we don't see this through the doom and gloom lens that some do, so while many will call this something worse than a B outing, it's a win that no one will be pointing back to in a negative way if things go well inside Beaver Stadium next weekend.

As for why this grade isn't higher, again, we're grading the totality of the team, and we'll end with this Franklin quote as an explanation.

"I was pretty aggressive on the headset with the staff of getting [the backups] in the game," he said.

"I thought the reps that we got were awesome, and they're going to be really, really valuable long term, but those guys, when they go in, they have to live up to the standard, and we did not do that today with our depth guys, with our backup guy, so that will be something that we addressed in the locker room, that'll be something we'll address during the week

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