Blue White Illustrated

You've heard the old expression of burying the hatchet. Well, on Sunday at the conclusion of this week's first prac- tice, Penn State did just that. Instead of burying an actual hatchet, however, the senior captains brought outside the game tape from Saturday's historic 27-10 loss to Temple. A few teammates took turns digging a hole next to the Lasch Building, tossed the DVD into the dirt and then they filled it in. They hope it'll never be seen again. "Actually with a shovel on the practice field right where we walk out – we buried it," senior captain Jordan Lucas said. "I think that's something we needed to do to get moving forward and kind of give us that positive energy back and, you know, have a little fun with this. We are now getting ready for Buffalo." Lucas, along with fellow captain Chris- tian Hackenberg, came up with the idea. "Hack brought it to my attention and brought the team up, and we just wanted to let the guys know that, hey, look, we're not going to dwell on the past," Lucas said. "It's our fault. We're going to bury this. It's not the end of our season. It's the first game of the season. We have 11 more opportunities, trying to get 12 more opportunities." ABer scoring 10 points in the first quar- ter vs. the Owls in Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field, Penn State went on to surrender 27 unanswered points over the final three quarters. It was the first time since 1941 that Temple won against the Nittany Lions. In all, Penn State gave up 10 sacks, to- taled just 180 total offensive yards com- pared to the Owls' 313 and possessed the ball for just 23 minutes and 45 seconds as opposed to Temple's 36:15. For most everyone associated with the Penn State football program, it was a game to be forgotten. Whether or not it is forgotten remains to be seen, despite the DVD being under a foot of soil next to the practice field. But for the Nittany Lion football play- ers, it was a symbolic way to put the sea- son-opening loss behind them. Not everyone on the team got a chance to break ground, but whether it was Lucas, Hackenberg or someone like of- fensive guard Brian Gaia or wide receiver Saeed Blacknall, the shovel made its rounds to a few different players. Added Lucas, "There were too many players for everybody to get a piece of the dirt." "The captains, Christian and Jordan, they both came up with the idea to bury the tape, and a lot of guys thought it was the right idea to do that," wide receiver DaeSean Hamilton said. "It was just something to put everything behind us." Even though they promised one an- other that they would no longer focus on the game, which was one of the worst losses in school history, they'll bear in mind exactly what they saw when they watched it with their position groups early Sunday morning. "We'll remember at the same time what that film consisted of and what we played like," Hamilton said. "Now we just forget about that, don't dwell on it and just move on." It's not the most orthodox way of put- ting a heartbreaking loss behind a team, and only time will determine if it'll be ef- fective when PSU takes the field Saturday vs. Buffalo. But one thing is for sure: that loss to Temple is now a thing of the past. "We're not going to talk about it any more," Lucas said. "It's the last we think about that game and that was it. That's what we wanted to let the guys know. We wanted to let especially the younger guys know that aBer Sunday's corrections, it's over." T I M   O W E N | O W E N . T I M . B W I @ G M a I L . C O M S E P T E M B E R 9 , 2 0 1 5 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 11 Tale of the tape Team captains help Lions put season-opening defeat behind them THE BIG DIG Hackenberg, along with Jordan Lucas, came up with the idea of burying the tape of the Temple game underneath the practice field at the Lasch Build- ing. Photo by Patrick Mansell

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