A day that started out so promising for Penn State came crashing down in the final minutes of the game on Saturday. Wisconsin was down 17-0 in the first quarter, but they never gave up while the Nittany Lions mailed it in the rest of way home.
There weren’t a ton of positives in that game from start to finish, but the defense masked the deficiencies with three key turnovers. Even those weren’t enough to catalyze a Penn State offense that could do nothing all night long. There are a million takeaways from this game and not a single one is positive, so here are five of the biggest stories.
Slow Starts
The Nittany Lions offense seems to be following a pattern of coming out firing one week and starting the game flat the next week. Despite a 17-point first quarter
against Wisconsin, the defense returned an interception for a score, and the offense scored a touchdown when they were set up in plus territory.
Penn State is going to get into a shootout at some point this season, and these slow starts simply won’t cut it. They squandered a 17-point lead by going through the motions and that just can’t happen again. They need to get it figured out quick.
Takeaways, takeaways, and more takeaways
Forcing turnovers was always going to be the best way to settle into the team’s first Big Ten showdown, and that’s exactly what happened. Freshman cornerback Josiah Zayas intercepted a pass in the first quarter and returned it for a touchdown. Then on the very next possession, cornerback Daryus Dixson picked off another pass.
They got another interception in the fourth quarter, but not even that was enough to secure the win. The defense tried everything they could in the first 55 minutes or so, but they didn’t have enough gas at the end after expending so much energy early.
Warm-ups
It’s beginning to look like quarterback Rocco Becht is simply a volume passer. This is three straight weeks that he’s come out of the gates sluggish and inaccurate. This concern is related to the offense’s slow starts, but it’s even more concerning coming from the man orchestrating the unit.
There are plays to be made early in the games, but Becht struggles to connect on them early on. It’s something that he and offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser will need to work to correct as the season progresses. If not for the takeaways from the defense, Penn State may have gotten blown out.
Time for acceptance
It seems like Penn State’s running game just might not have a lot of juice this season. We are one-third of the way through the season now and that part of the offense is just as inconsistent as it was to start the year.
Mouser has tried tinkering with the personnel groupings, the snap distribution, and the running philosophy, but none of the changes have produced any groundbreaking results. The rushing attack might never get to an elite level this season, but there is still enough talent and experience in the running back room to get by.
Carson Hansen, James Peoples, and Quinton Martin Jr. might not terrify defenses individually, but their skill sets combine to form a solid rushing attack. Perhaps the strategy going forward needs to be about mixing up the backs as much as possible since they all specialize in different things.
Recalibrating expectations
The College Football Playoff is all but off the board now. Losing to an unranked team is a death sentence, and with no juggernauts on the schedule for the Nittany Lions to prove their worth against, they’ll need some help from other teams in the country.
There was so much promise for this season, but now the team needs to refocus and try their hardest to secure another Bowl Game appearance. That hardly seems like a consolation prize now, though, after such a promising path was squandered by a catastrophic collapse.
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This article originally appeared on Nittany Lions Wire: 5 major takeaways from Penn State’s collapse vs. Wisconsin
