The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Reviewing Penn State football’s 24-15 loss to Michigan
With Penn State fans loudly expressing their utter disappointment with Saturday’s loss to Michigan, I’m not going to use up your time with an intro this week. Let’s get into it.
Good
Adisa Isaac: Honestly the only real bright spot. Adisa Isaac is a monster out there. Play after play, game after game, he changes outcomes — even if he didn’t Saturday afternoon. Isaac has been overshadowed by Chop Robinson for most of the year and deserves to be in many of the same conversations his teammate is in. He’s one of the best defensive ends in the country, and has the talent and production to put himself in the mix to go in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft. Isaac explodes off the ball in the passing game, ripping through opposing offensive tackles like they don’t even exist. He’s a force in the running game, getting into the body of linemen before shedding them to the side so he can make a play and slipping through gaps when he can. It should be no surprise that he had three tackles for loss in the game.
James Franklin’s tenure at Penn State: To a lot of people, this is part of the problem with the James Franklin era, and it’s not intended to be a compliment. His tenure has simply been good for nearly the last decade — never reaching the heights of the elite. Franklin has led the team to New Year’s Six bowl games and a single Big Ten title, but has never taken the program to the College Football Playoff. I don’t think it’s impossible that the team could have been a consistent playoff team, but now we’ll never know. The playoff will expand to 12 next year and the Nittany Lions will, or at least should, make it nearly every season. Those years will probably still end with a whimper, but in the second round rather than in the regular season. Because — try as they may — they’ve been unable to find their way to the top of the college football food chain.
Bad
Mike Yurcich: The problem with this program right now is not its defense, and the special teams has mostly been fine this year. It seems pretty clear that the flaws are on offense. The issue is, what’s the solution? The play-calling isn’t good, the wide receivers can’t get open and the quarterback struggled mightily. At the end of the day, all of that falls under the purview of offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich — which explains why he was fired by the program Sunday afternoon. He was in his third year as the team’s lead offensive assistant and once again failed to produce anything coming close to a good offense against an elite defense. The blame couldn’t even fall with the offensive line like it has in the past. It was a matter of the coaching not being enough. Struggling receivers couldn’t get open and it seems to have affected the quarterback, who is now more hesitant than ever.
Drew Allar: Speaking of the quarterback. Drew Allar has to play better than he did Saturday afternoon. Sure, he was not put in position to succeed, but even when he was, he was off the mark. Allar looked like he was almost over-correcting from mistakes made in previous weeks. In the past he would throw outside routes too far wide, but Saturday those throws were too far inside and allowed Michigan to make a play on the ball. His timing has been off with his receivers all season but that was especially true this time around. While Allar was able to make plays with his legs, the offense wasn’t able to do enough as a whole and some of the blame for that has to fall on the quarterback, especially when he only completes 10 of his 22 passing attempts.
Prowler package: A personnel group that has been a staple of the defense’s success all season played a big role in its undoing in this one. Michigan got to 3rd-and-long multiple times, allowing the Nittany Lions to go to their prowler package — a personnel grouping with five pass rushers and six defensive backs that brings pressure from multiple areas. Instead of playing into Penn State’s hands, the Wolverines did the unthinkable.
They ran the ball.
Once on 3rd-and-10 on their first scoring drive, with quarterback J.J. McCarthy keeping the ball and running for 13 yards to extend the drive. And then again on 3rd-and-11, with running back Donovan Edwards taking a carry 22 yards for a touchdown. The personnel package was always susceptible to the run, but the underlying assumption was that no team would run in those 3rd-and-long scenarios. Michigan did and it went exactly how you’d expect.
Wide receivers: It would be wildly optimistic to think that this is going to get better with two weeks left in the season. The Penn State wide receivers have not played well enough all season and Saturday was the low point. They had five catches in the game for a whopping 29 yards. That’s brutal and there’s no way around it.
KeAndre Lambert-Smith has led the way for most of the season but even he wasn’t able to get going. If Dante Cephas is going to break out, it’s probably going to be next season. Kaden Saunders flashed the talent that made him a top-100 recruit, but he hasn’t been able to get on the field consistently. Malik McClain, Malick Meiga and Liam Clifford are all great contributors on special teams but should not be starting at receiver. Omari Evans had a role last year but has essentially vanished from a playing time standpoint. That leaves a group of unknowns — the Cristian Driver’s and Anthony Ivey’s of the world — who have yet to play any meaningful snaps. And maybe that’s the group Penn State fans can dream on. Those players are young and should be ascending. But even that hope has to come next year, because nothing any receiver does is going to save what the group has already lost in 2023.
Ugly
What comes next: We have all seen this cycle before. The Nittany Lions lose their two most important games, eliminating themselves from the playoff. Then they go on a nice little run to close the regular season, with fans still frustrated because of the failures in big games. Next comes a bowl game — maybe a New Year’s Six but possibly a regular one — against a good but not great team that’s ranked inside the top 25. Penn State goes on to win that game, re-igniting the hope and earning some buy-in from fans that next season will be different.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
I don’t know that next year can’t be different, but it’s difficult to believe it will at this point. Either way, the next month or so will likely be painful for Penn State fans. Michigan and Ohio State will battle for playoff bids, with both potentially getting in, while the Nittany Lion faithful contemplate the what-ifs of the games against the two of them. And instead of focusing on having the door cracked on the way to being elite, they’ll have to wonder if it’s even possible for the program to walk through when it opens.
