Blue White Illustrated

TRUST ISSUES As PSU looks to change course, players may be trying to do too much, not too little efore he was swept up in the wave of attrition that has claimed sev- eral of Penn State's best players this fall, Pat Freiermuth diagnosed a few of the other big prob- lems that the Nittany Lions have endured throughout their disappointing 2020 season. Immediately following the Lions' 30-23 loss at Ne- braska, the team's fourth loss in as many weeks to start the season, the junior tight end identified what he believed to be the offense's essential shortcomings. He insisted that the players on his side of the ball needed to create more explo- sive plays by breaking tackles and gener- ating yards after the catch, and then he offered a bottom line proposition more simplistic than even that. "It just goes back to everyone trying to do too much and trying to play out of the framework of the offense," he said. "We've got to block who we're responsi- ble for. We've got to block them with the correct technique. … If we run our routes at the right depth, then we're going to create the most explosive plays that we can." For a team with a myriad of challenges it has had to confront this year, a list topped by an opt-out, a career-ending heart condition, and a succession of sea- son-ending injuries to several of its best players, the actual on-field product has been relatively easy to assess. Offensively, Penn State quarterbacks Sean Clifford and Will Levis have given up too many turnovers in too many crit- ically damaging situations. The unit had moved the ball effectively enough through five games, averaging 418.0 yards per game to rank fourth in the Big Ten, but points were elusive due to the giveaways, and also to the team's habit of stalling in the red zone. Defensively, Penn State hasn't come anywhere close to generating the num- ber of turnovers it expected. Splash plays in general – sacks, tackles for loss, turnovers – have all been way down on average from recent seasons. And, as ev- idenced by the loss to Nebraska, explo- sive plays have been particularly damaging. The Cornhuskers added a 45- yard score to a string that included touchdowns of 26, 49, 42, 62, 34 and 38 yards in the previous three weeks. Read between the lines of Freiermuth's comments, though, and the fundamen- tal ingredient missing right now in all three phases of Penn State football is trust. Clifford lost his starting job in late No- vember as a direct result of mistrust of his offensive line, receivers and running backs. Burned at times by mistakes that have not all been of his own doing, Clif- ford has spent the season growing more and more desperate to make increasingly improbable plays. With sack-fumbles returned for touchdowns in back-to- back weeks, in games that were still within reach before the critical errors, he was benched in the second quarter at Nebraska and was replaced in the start- ing lineup by Levis the following week against Iowa. To hear Penn State players tell it, though, the issue has hardly been lim- ited to Clifford, or even to the offensive side of the ball. Will Fries, who was moved at midsea- son from right tackle to right guard, said the Nittany Lions spent the week lead- ing up to the Nebraska game working to tamp down a "do more" mentality that had created more issues than it had re- solved. Charged with providing quarter- back protection in a unit ranked 117th in the Football Bowl Subdivision at a Big Ten-worst 3.75 sacks per game prior to its visit to Lincoln, Fries said the Nittany Lions were turning their collective focus inward as they headed into the second half of the season. "That was kind of the theme for this week – not only trusting yourself, but trusting your teammates and knowing that they're going to have your back, and I've got their back. I don't see that changing," he said. "I think that going forward, that's going to be vital for our team to improve. You can't do more than your job. You have to do your job and trust that the guy next to you and the guy down the line from you is going to do his job so we can play 11 as one." Freiermuth noted that the problems JUDGMENT CALL B MAJOR LOSS Freiermuth's season-ending surgery was a blow to PSU's offense. Photo courtesy of Penn State Athletics

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