Blue White Illustrated

LAST WORD N A T E B A U E R | N B A U E R @ B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M our months before Penn State opened its 2018 season, head coach James Franklin pointed to what he saw as the Nittany Lions' dual identity this year. Franklin described the group as "hun- gry" in the spring, a reflection of its youth, inexperience and desire to prove itself worthy. But he also said the Lions were missing certain critical qualities. As eager as all those young players might have been, they weren't battle- tested, and that was a glaring vulnera- bility in the coach's eyes. "I worry a little bit about this team [because it lacks] those juniors and sen- iors, those guys who had seen a lot of adversity at Penn State and who had to fight through that adversity, which al- lowed us all to grow," he said. "I think we're in a situation now where we have freshmen, redshirt freshmen and soph- omores who think it's just a birthright. Just show up to Penn State and we win 11 or more games. That's what we do – play in New Year's Six bowls. They don't really understand all the hard work and sacrifice that went into getting to that point." Halfway through the season, the Nit- tany Lions have been confronted squarely with realities of that premoni- tion. In back-to-back home losses to Ohio State and Michigan State, the Lions ap- peared to be a team with visible talent but also a penchant for undisciplined setbacks. Trace McSorley's statistics demon- strated as much. Completing 92 of his 170 pass attempts for 1,241 yards and 11 touchdowns in the Lions' first six games, the fifth-year senior quarter- back engineered a comeback victory against Appalachian State to open the season and guided the Lions to domi- nant wins against Pitt, Kent State and Illinois through the first four weeks. But even in those games, and defi- nitely in the subsequent losses to the Buckeyes and Spartans, he suffered through the effects of the personnel changes that occurred between the 2017 and '18 seasons. As the departure of Saquon Barkley, Mike Gesicki and DaeSean Hamilton became increasingly noticeable, McSorley threw for fewer yards, with fewer touchdowns, and a dramatically decreased completion per- centage, for a dramatically decreased quarterback rating, than he had the pre- vious campaign. There was no single culprit on which to peg the downturn. It was a responsi- bility shared between McSorley and his targets. But the 17 drops charged to Penn State's skill position players were certainly unhelpful, and those drops were just the beginning of the Nittany Lions' problems. A number of posses- sions were undermined by false starts, holding calls and fumbles. In addition, true freshman place kicker Jake Pinegar knocked home only four of his eight field goal attempts in the first half of the season, depriving the Nittany Lions of critical three-point boosts. Against the Buckeyes and Spartans, games in which the combined margin of defeat was a mere five points, Pinegar's misses were of real consequence. As with the offense and special teams, the flashes of talent and firepower on the defensive side of the ball were tem- pered by a number of deficiencies. Un- timely penalties, missed opportunities to collect takeaways, and other failures were prevalent throughout the first half of the season. Against lesser opponents, those issues might have been of little to no conse- quence. But against Big Ten standard- bearer Ohio State and wounded-but- dangerous Michigan State, the Nittany Lions' casual, careless personality proved to be their undoing. "There was one guy here or there who wasn't doing their job to the best of their ability, and that stuff just spirals," center Michal Menet said following the Lions' last-minute loss to the Spartans. "You've got to have 11 guys doing their jobs consistently to be able to have a successful football team on offense, de- fense and special teams. I think there was just a guy or two on a few plays that [wasn't in sync], and obviously it made our [team] suffer a lot." The second half of the schedule in- cludes games against Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin and Maryland, all of which were sitting in the top half of their re- spective divisions at the midway point of the season. So for the Nittany Lions, the suffering will continue without considerable changes. Harking all the way back to Franklin's preseason concerns, the Lions were a team with a dual identity through the first half of the schedule. "I see a hungry team that wants to prove itself and individuals who want to grow in their roles, but I also feel like, as a team, we've got to do a good job as coaches to make sure this team is able to fight through adversity so that they can grow, because we haven't been through it," Franklin said. "That's something that I've been spending time thinking about and talking about. I think we have both extremes probably in a lot of ways." Eager to prove themselves but unable to apply the lessons of challenging cir- cumstances this season, the Lions are faced with a question that will deter- mine the course of the rest of the sea- son, a question as to which identity they'll ultimately take on. ■ Identity crisis F

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