Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1072455
he sensible thing to do would have been to call for a handoff. Trace McSorley had been poked in the eye on the previous play, and his re- placement, Sean Clifford, was a redshirt freshman who had thrown only five passes in his college career, the most re- cent of which had been more than three months earlier. But Penn State's coaches had told themselves going into the Citrus Bowl that they were going to be bold, so in- stead of simply giving the ball to Miles Sanders and hoping to get a bit of posi- tive yardage against a Kentucky de- fense that was surely expecting just that, Clifford dropped back on first-and-10 and heaved a deep pass down the left sideline. It ap- peared for a moment as though the staff's bravado was going to pay off spec- tacularly. DeAndre Thompkins was well-cov- ered, but the ball landed in his hands as he streaked toward the end zone. And then it went skittering to the turf. So first-and-10 became second-and- 10, which became third-and-11, which… well… you know where this is going. "We had opportunities to make plays," coach James Franklin lamented in the news conference that followed Penn State's 27-24 loss to the Wildcats. "Re- ally, the same thing that troubled us throughout the season troubled us here again today – dropped balls, missed op- portunities." Thompkins led the Nittany Lions with four catches for 74 yards in his final game, but it was the missed connection with Clifford that lingers. You could comb through the 899 offensive plays that Penn State ran in 2018 without finding another moment that so suc- cinctly encapsulates the ways in which this season differed from its recent predecessors. In 2016 and '17, the Lions made a habit of hitting big plays downfield. That ap- proach – go big or go home – transformed Penn State into one of the nation's most en- tertaining teams. It wasn't all chunk plays and end zone cel- ebrations, of course; McSor- ley's completion percentage during Penn State's 2016 Big Missed opportunities haunted PSU throughout the 2018 season. Will the Nittany Lions be better equipped to seize them next fall? A T T H E 2 0 1 9 N I T T A N Y L I O N S GAMES OF CHANCE T LOOSE BALL Thompkins was- n't able to come down with this pass from Clif- ford in the sec- ond quarter of Penn State's 27- 24 loss to Ken- tucky. Photo by Steve Manuel