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 ooking ahead, not back, has been Penn State quarterback Trace Mc- Sorley's aim each week this season. That objective was never more appar- ent than after a brutal 42-7 loss to fifth-ranked Michigan on Nov. 3. The Nittany Lions had lost because of a combination of the hosts' dominance and their own inability to make big plays on either side of the ball, and af- terward the fifth-year senior quarter- back was less interested in making sense of what had happened than in figuring out what needed to be done to get the team back on track to close out its final three games of the regular sea- son. "I think part of it is getting on to the next week and making sure that we're doing everything in our power to under- stand the corrections that we need to make this week coming out of this game," McSorley said. "Fighting harder for the rest of the year, that's kind of all it is, fighting together." Fighting harder, and together, has been a fight against human nature for the Nittany Lions this season. They lost their unblemished record when they fell, 27-26, to then-No. 4 Ohio State on Sept. 29, and shaking it off proved to be a more monumental task than anyone might have believed. It had been a gut-punch game in which the Lions led by 12 points with just eight minutes left to play. Head coach James Franklin's postgame soliloquy was about what it would take to shift the program from "great" to "elite," and his players echoed those words when they filed into the media room soon after. Greater attention to the detail would be necessary, they said. But in following the Ohio State melt- down with a sleepwalking 21-17 loss to Michigan State, the Lions also lost any realistic chance at attaining the goals they had gone into the season hoping to secure, including a trip to the Big Ten Championship Game and a shot at the College Football Playoff. And all of it coalesced around the Nit- tany Lion offense. They had entered the campaign un- derstanding the likely impact of the off- season losses they had absorbed, both in the coaching staff (Joe Moorhead, Charles Huff, Josh Gattis) and on the field (Saquon Barkley, DaeSean Hamil- ton, Mike Gesicki). But through their first four games, the Lions were weath- ering those losses just fine. In fact, they owned the nation's No. 1 scoring offense with an average of 55 points per game. In wins against Appalachian State, Pitt, Kent State and Illinois, big numbers were again the norm. Cracks were showing, though, even as Miles Sanders stepped in at running back, K.J. Hamler provided a big boost among the wideouts, true freshman Pat Freiermuth surged to the forefront of the tight ends, and McSorley continued to make the whole show go. Drops by the Nittany Lion wideouts and tight ends stunted the offense's progress in critical game situations as well as for the season as a whole. Penn State's of- fensive line found its edge, then lost it, as Sanders and the running game grad- ually took a back seat to a floundering passing attack. And McSorley's body took a weekly pounding as his role in the running game expanded. Against Iowa, he suffered a right knee injury that forced him out of the game briefly and has since required him to wear a protective brace. Frustrated by the seemingly sudden decline of Penn State's once-potent of- fense, fans turned to Franklin for an- swers. "Everybody else is waiting for some- one to make the play, and then we're going to rally behind that person," he said. "And what I talked about [to the team] is, every single one of them was brought into this program to make that play, not to wait for everybody else to do it. I think that's something that's really, really important – those guys under- standing that they were brought here to make the plays. They are capable of making the plays, and they need to go do them. "Our approach needs to be: You're going to make the play. When the op- portunity presents itself, you're going to take advantage of it." As hard as that's been for the Nittany Lions to do this season, they should be credited for their persistence in trying. They rebounded from the Ohio State and Michigan State losses with grind- it-out wins against Indiana and Iowa, proving their mettle. Later, they re- sponded to the thrashing at Michigan with another hard-fought victory against a Wisconsin team that at the time was still in contention for a shot at the Big Ten West Division title and a berth in the conference championship game. "We've got to get back to being who we were at that point when it was all about hard work and dedication and getting to that," McSorley said. "We've got to figure out ways to win games." In a season in which nothing has come easy, it's an attitude that has already paid dividends and is likely to continue to do so into the future. The Lions are fortunate to have the necessary leadership to impart those lessons, and vast numbers of under- classmen to soak them in. Those experi- ences will have the Nittany Lions looking ahead, not back. ■ Forward thinkers L

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