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A
nother season of Penn State football is in the books.
That means it's time to look back on the year that
was, evaluate the high points, the low points and a
few points in between.
But as Bill O'Brien said after the Nittany Lions defeated Wisconsin in the season finale, he and his team
don't put much stock in the media's evaluation of his
squad. "It doesn't matter what any of you think relative to
that football team," he told reporters while wearing an earto-ear grin in his postgame presser. "It doesn't matter
what you think. It matters what [the players] think."
Fair point. And although we're still gonna give it a shot,
it's only right to begin our look back at the 2013 season
with the evaluation of the head coach himself. For the
record, that evaluation is mixed. Even amid the euphoria
of the Lions' 31-24 upset over 14th-ranked Wisconsin, a
victory that pushed their record above .500, the secondyear head coach was not feeling particularly satisfied with
the team's performance over the course of the season.
"I still think it was up and down, O'Brien said. "There
"
were a lot of close games. My perception is this: In this
program this year, we had a small margin of error. More
times than not, we beat that margin of error, we made fewer errors and loss only five. But when we didn't – when we
made too many mistakes – we lost a lot of close games and
got blown out once.
"
GRAND FINALE
Seniors Eric Shrive,
John Urschel and
DaQuan Jones celebrate following Penn
State's victory over Wisconsin. Photo by Steve
Manuel
