Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1528325
6 6 N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 4 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M I f you had asked any follower of Penn State football back in August what would constitute a great first half of the season, they would likely have said: Ask me after the USC game. The Nittany Lions are firmly in the na- tional top five after storming back to beat USC, 33-30, in an overtime thriller at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Oct. 12. That was win No. 6, of course. Before it, head coach James Franklin's team won in all sorts of different ways. The Lions opened the year with a win at West Virginia that featured a two-plus- hour weather delay. Then, they struggled to put away a Bowling Green team that was better than expected. A walk-over win over the worst team in college foot- ball, Kent State, after their first bye set the Lions up to physically dominate Il- linois in a 21-7 triumph that was not as close as the final score indicated. Then, a final tune-up before the road trip out west saw the Lions beat back UCLA, 27-11. While they failed to fully put the Bruins away, head coach DeShaun Fos- ter's side never threatened to win in the second half. Penn State followed with its second and final bye week of the year before em- barking on the last stretch of the regular season. Fans could ask for more of the team at this point, but not much more. Slow starts on both sides of the ball have been a point of frustration. Penalties were once an issue, but that problem seems to have abated. Two new coordinators — Andy Kotel- nicki on offense and Tom Allen on de- fense — have been putting their players in position to make plays and ultimately earn victories. Kotelnicki has been a breath of fresh air. His mad scientist way of creating plays often leaves opponents confused, and he has seemingly un- locked potential that junior quarterback Drew Allar had hinted at previously. Senior tight end Tyler Warren is one of the sport's most impactful players game in and game out and is a candidate for the Mackey Award and All-America recognition. Defensively, the Lions are among the nation's best at creating havoc, even if the stat sheet isn't lit up like a Christmas tree with sacks and turnovers as it has been in some other years. A big special teams issue at kicker ap- pears to have been solved with redshirt freshman Ryan Barker taking over for redshirt junior Sander Sahaydak. And while the rest of the special teams units haven't been making many big plays, they haven't suffered the kind of miscues — blocks, muffs, etc. — that can cost a team a game. There have been issues along the way, of course. Potential All-America safety Kevin Winston Jr. was lost to a long-term injury in September. It changed how Al- len calls the defense, but it's been so far, so good without the experienced junior. There have been plenty of other bumps and bruises along the way, some short- and some long-term. Questions will linger about junior running back Nicholas Singleton's health coming out of the bye week, even though he played plenty at USC. Also, redshirt freshman right tackle An- thony Donkoh is banged up a bit. All told, the posi- tives outweigh the negatives through a month and a half of the 2024 season, which is why the Lions are back in the top five and penciled into a Col- lege Football Playoff spot. "There are a ton of things that I think we're going to be able to learn from in this game, and we need to learn from this game, because we're far from perfect," Franklin said after the Lions beat the Trojans. "We're also 6-0, and 1-0 this week, and we're going to take it and run." Penn State must now run through the second half of its schedule. A home date with a top-five Ohio State team in early November replaces USC in the "ask me after …" conversation about this team's outlook. And as the Trojans demon- strated by losing to Minnesota in early October, a Penn State road trip to Min- neapolis next month will be no gimme. The visit to Wisconsin was looking like a formidable test, too, even if the Badgers are not the biggest threat in the Big Ten. The expanded 12-team College Foot- ball Playoff was built for Penn State, a team that was too often just on the cusp of, but not in, the former four-team for- mat. From what we've seen so far, it's en- tirely reasonable to think that PSU can make the field and maybe even go deeper than the first round. But much work remains to make that vision a reality. The good news is, in a season of carnage across college football, Penn State has so far avoided it. It is sitting as pretty as possible as it moves into the second half of the season. ■ O P I N I O N GREG PICKEL GREG.PICKEL@ON3.COM Plenty Of Work Remains, But CFP Is Within Reach THE LAST WORD New defensive coordinator Tom Allen has found ways of overcoming a long-term injury to one of his best players, junior safety Kevin Winston Jr. PHOTO BY MARK SELDERS/PENN STATE ATHLETICS