Blue White Illustrated

N O V E M B E R 1 , 2 0 1 7 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 9 Mike Gesicki was not about to mope. The Penn State senior tight end sat back in a creaky plastic folding chair in the cramped visiting team media room at Ohio Stadium, surrounded by reporters. Only minutes earlier, his team had lost to No. 6 Ohio State, 39-38, and the questions concerned the immediate future – his and the team's. Was this it? Had Penn State's preseason goals of a repeat Big Ten championship and trip back to the Rose Bowl, this time for a College Football Playoff semifinal, become unattainable? Where would this team go from here, its destiny now at least partially out of its control? Gesicki needed practically no time, or deep thought, to provide an answer. "We're not going to fall apart. We have too much talent, too much experience, too much in front of us," he said. "Guys, we lost a 39-38 football game against the sixth- best team in the country that is now going to jump into the top four. We might see them again, honestly. So at the end of the day, we still have everything out there in front of us. We've got to keep coming back to work and bouncing back. We're going to be absolutely fine. There's no reason for panic." Many of the veteran players who joined Gesicki in the postgame media scrum shared his attitude. They had been through challenges before, fighting back from the many the setbacks of the 2014 and '15 sea- sons, as well as the 2-2 start to the '16 sea- son. This was going to be no different. "We still have a lot of season leB to play, we still have a lot to prove. This was just a reality check for us," linebacker Manny Bowen said. "It's tough, but we've been dealing with adversity forever around here. This isn't the end of it. There's always going to be adversity, so it's just how we re- spond to this." That response won't just be about mov- ing on but about maintaining the standard that has been set from the top down under head coach James Franklin and his staff. Under Franklin, the Nittany Lions have not gotten carried away with themselves in the aBermath of big wins, and the same mind- set applies to losses. "It's just a philosophy," linebacker Koa Farmer said. "It's just how we do things here. Coming in as a freshman, you just kind of get shown the ropes, and for me, it's just a norm. We're going to watch this film. Guys that missed plays, including myself, are going to be like, 'Damn.' Then aBer that, the coach is going to critique you, just get better from it and the next thing you know we're doing game corrections, and aBer the game corrections, we're getting introduced to Michigan State's offense. It's quick." The end result is a Penn State program that is not expressing the same despair as some of its supporters. With plenty of necessary improvements to make, highlighted by a challenging op- ponent in Ohio State on Saturday, the Nit- tany Lions are aiming to see the season through to its conclusion, whatever that might be. "Anything can happen. For us at this point last year, we thought maybe we had a chance at the Rose Bowl, and then by the end of the year we had a shot at the College Football Playoff," quarterback Trace Mc- Sorley said. "Teams lose, upsets happen. We don't control our own destiny, but we can focus on the only things that we can control, which is coming in each day, working harder than ever, playing harder than ever on Saturdays and doing whatever it takes to get wins from here on out." Gesicki pulls in one of his six catches in Penn State's loss to the Buckeyes last Saturday. The senior tight end said he expects the Nittany Lions to bounce back. "We have too much tal- ent, too much ex- perience, too much in front of us," he said. Photo by Steve Manuel N A T E   B A U E R | N B A U E R @ B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M Lions eager to rebound after first loss of season

• Cover