Blue White Illustrated

Southern California, which is in many ways Penn State's mirror image, a team that started slowly before building up some momentum behind the play of a talented young quarter- back and emerging from the regular season looking a lot like one of the powerhouse teams from its storied past. As Franklin noted, "If you just take where teams are at at the end of the season and don't talk about overall record but just say, who are the best teams in college football right now, you could make an argument that USC would be in that conversation." The other part of the challenge is internal. After two years of skepticism and dismissal, the Nittany Lions have been put on a pedestal. A number of prominent college football analysts projected them as potential College Football Playoff participants, and while that sort of flattery definitely beats the alternative, it's not without its draw- backs. "The fact that these guys are getting patted on the back and those types of things, there's confidence that comes with that," Franklin said. "But we have to be careful that they're not overconfident and that we don't lose who we are, which is a blue-collar, hard-nosed team that focuses on preparation and con- trolling the things that we can control." The Lions put themselves in this position by shrugging off a 2-2 start and steadily building confidence as the season went on, first with wins over previously unbeaten Minnesota and Maryland, and then by pulling off the biggest upset of the year in college football, a 24-21 stunner over Ohio State in which they outscored the second-ranked Buckeyes 17-0 in the fourth quarter. In that respect, their season was much like USC's. The Trojans lost two of their first three games, falling to Alabama, 52-6, re- bounding with a 45-7 rout of Utah State, and then flat-lining again in a 27-10 loss to Stan- ford. A lot of things went wrong in those first three games, but the biggest was an offense that couldn't find its rhythm. Redshirt junior quarterback Max Browne was a team captain who had been the team's backup QB the two previous seasons. He was the obvious choice to lead the Trojans coming into the season. But in the losses to Alabama and Stanford, he completed 56 percent of his passes for 292 yards and didn't throw any touchdown passes. So coach Clay Helton decided to make a switch. Redshirt freshman Sam Darnold had looked good in practice, and when he spelled Browne in those early-season games, he still looked good. Darnold was promoted to the first team prior to USC's visit to Utah on Sept. 23, and he immediately showed that Helton's confidence hadn't been misplaced, complet- ing 18 of 26 passes for 253 yards. The Trojans weren't able to pull out a victory, but they were competitive for the entire game, build- ing a 10-point fourth-quarter lead before the 24th-ranked Utes rallied for a 31-27 win. It's now been three months since the Tro- jans' visit to Salt Lake City, and their decision to hand the offense to Darnold looks like the turning point in their season. They haven't lost a game since falling to Utah, closing out their regular season with eight wins in a row and claiming a spot opposite Penn State in the Rose Bowl. Helton said recently that the coaching staff had played it safe initially. The quarterback battle in preseason camp had been inconclu- sive, with neither candidate establishing himself as the clear leader, so the coaches went with Browne, the one they knew best. Darnold would have been a riskier choice simply because he was a bigger unknown. But after the team's 1-2 start, that began to seem more and more like a risk worth taking. "We went through the first three games and had the opportunity to see Sam play at the Alabama game, at Stanford, at Utah State, and saw that the things he was doing in prac- tice were exactly correlating to the games, that the stage wasn't too big for him," Helton said. "We would have loved to have been 3-0 at the time, but we were 1-2, and we had not scored a lot of points. We had scored one touchdown against Alabama and Stanford and felt at that moment we had to do what was best for our team and make a change at the position and allow Sam to try to create a spark for our offense. "He has done that very successfully. He's one of the big reasons we are where we are today." Darnold has completed 68.1 percent of his passes, and despite seeing limited action in USC's first three games, he's thrown for 2,633 yards, with 26 touchdown passes and only eight interceptions. As the leader of USC's offense – Browne recently announced plans to transfer – Darnold definitely has Penn D E C E M B E R   3 0 ,   2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 2 TALE OF THE TAPE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PENN STATE SCHOOL'S BOWL RECORD 34-18 28-16-2 ROSE BOWL RECORD 24-8 1-2 MOST RECENT BOWL Lost to Wisconsin, 23-21, in the 2015 Holiday Bowl Lost to Georgia, 24-17, in the 2016 TaxSlayer Bowl BASIC OFFENSE Multiple (32.9 ppg, 468.9 ypg) Multiple (36.7 ppg, 430.1 ypg) RUSHING LEADER Ronald Jones II (157 att, 1,027 yds, 11 TDs, 6.5 ypc) Saquon Barkley (247 att, 1,302 yds, 16 TDs, 5.3 ypc) PASSING LEADER Sam Darnold (2,633 yds, 26 TDs, 8 int, 68.1 pct) Trace McSorley (3,360 yds, 25 TDs, 5 int, 57.5 pct) RECEIVING LEADER JuJu Smith-Schuster (63 rec, 781 yds, 9 TDs) Chris Godwin (50 rec, 795 yds, 9 TDs) BASIC DEFENSE 3-4 (22.2 ppg, 359.0 ypg) 4-3 (23.4 ppg, 352.0 ypg) TACKLE LEADER Cameron Smith (36 asst, 43 solo, 79 total) Marcus Allen (49 asst, 52 solo, 101 total) SACK LEADER Porter Gustin (5.5, 42 yds) Evan Schwan (6, 43 yds), Garrett Sickels (6, 42 yds) INTERCEPTION LEADER Adoree' Jackson (4, 0 yds) Brandon Smith (2, 22 yds) T A L E O F T H E T A P E

• Cover