Blue and White Roundtable: Once More, With Feeling.
October 16, 2007 by Run Up The Score!
My turn to write Blue & White Roundtable questions after a freaky weekend in college football. As always, partake in the expertise of Black Shoe Diaries, The Nittany Line, There Is No Name On My Jersey, The Nittany Notebook, and William Yurasko.
1. Two consecutive games, two dominating performances by the Nittany Lion running game. Why the drastic change in production?
A number of things. The production of the Kinlaw / Royster tandem is meeting the pre-season expectations many people had for Kinlaw / Superstar Austin Scott. For the first few weeks of the sesaon, we had the Kinlaw / Bad Austin Scott combo, which sucked.
Incidentally, Kinlaw’s turned into a great story in a season filled with bad stories. The seventeenth-year senior who arrived at Penn State with blazing speed, only to suffer a knee injury and never truly threaten the #1 position on the depth chart until two or three weeks ago.
Let’s not discount the improvement of the offensive line either. It’s been a long time since Penn State’s offensive line has opened up giant holes on a regular basis. Like I said on Monday, this is How It Was Supposed To Be.
2. Since the departure of Tom Osborne before the 1998, Nebraska quickly fired Frank Solich, hired a bad NFL coach, and on Monday fired its Athletic Director. Is there any way to avoid this sort of fiasco when Joe Paterno eventually retires?
Alabama, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, USC. They all went through utter chaos after their legendary coaches left. Alabama was soiled with scandalous coaches. Nebraska fired a guy after a 10 win season. Oklahoma was coached by all kinds of jokers after Barry Switzer left. Notre Dame’s still struggling since the Lou Holtz years. For decades, USC was the model program for every west coast school but went through a period of utter irrelevance in the 1990’s.
Once Paterno’s gone, everyone and everything is fair game. Factions will form. Donors will compete. Cat’s away, mice will play, all that stuff. Seats need to be filled by winning football games, because Paterno’s legend won’t be around to gloss over the bad times.
3. Terrelle Pryor is on the verge of crossing Penn State off his list, if he hasn’t already. Does Penn State absolutely have to sign a quarterback in this class, or can we afford to wait until next season?
It would be nice if someone could suddenly fall into our laps like Anthony Morelli and Pat Devlin did a few years ago. Considering the annual coaching turnover across the nation, it’s always a possibility. Still, Penn State will have at least scholarship three QB’s next year (Clark, Devlin, Suhey) so it’s not a total crisis.
Lightning Round
Describe a scenario in which Penn State ties for the conference title. Obviously, Penn State has to beat Ohio State. What other dominoes need to fall?
Okay, okay. Ohio State loses to Michigan and Penn State. Michigan loses to Illinois and Wisconsin. Illinois loses to Ohio State. I think that’s a four way tie.
Will Penn State have its typical lazy start in a noon road game?
This is a total hunch, but I think the coaching staff has learned a lot about its team over the last two weeks. As long as they come out with the same balanced but semi-aggressive gameplan, Penn State can start well on offense.
Score prediction?
Penn State 31, Indiana 21. Not as close as it looks.
I think we need ill and um to lose more games - their wins over psu could be grounds for our elimination - although tosu defeating ill could mix it up (When four are tied - If two of the four teams defeated each of the other two, those two are eliminated and the remaining two revert to the two-team tie procedure). Otherwise, if the teams are not eliminated due to head-to-head match-ups - it goes to winning percentages - and both um and ill have ooc losses - which would leave PSU and tosu - and, given your scenario - psu would win the h-t-h. It would be awesome and yet a little sad that the B10 champion had 2 losses.
the need for a QB is in next years class, not this one.
What we really need is consistency on the OL.
This good one year, bad the next is killing the offense (along with all the other problems on the offense)
And I don’t know if the problem is recruiting or coaching. I favor the latter.
Is this gonna Kill You? No i Dont Think so !
My responses:
http://pennstateminutiae.blogspot.com/
In the true spirit of piracy - you can find my responses here - but, alas, no pirate-speak or free cable.
If I can give you guys some advice, don’t overlook IU like you seem to be doing. Your team is walking into a pissed-off atmosphere like you might not be able to imagice. First off, the team is pissed about that fiasco last week in Michigan. On a greater level, you won’t be able to find an IU fan that isn’t just furious right now, something apparently happened in another sport. And your team sits squarely in the crosshairs as the nearest thing to take all that pent up anger out on. Not to mention, everybody wants the football team to get to six wins and they want it to happen this Saturday. Add in that it’s Homecoming and you’re going to have more pissed off fans than usual looking for win six.
On some actual game notes, the IU defense isn’t as bad as alot of you want to think, they just had a disaster last week. If they were so bad, how could they be leading the nation in sacks? How could the team be 5-2? On the offensive side, IU still put up 27 points despite playing terrible last week, those points came on just 36 offensive plays. Are you scared enough of Lewis, Hardy, & Co.? Lastly, you guys wouldn’t know anything about disasters in Michigan, would you?
IU blows, they have one good player @ WR and that is it.
PSU - 428
IU - 6
By the way, Homecoming is just an added bonus for PSU. Just another chance for IU alumns to relive past losses to PSU.
I don’t think that anyone is overlooking iu - they’re a fine team and they are playing with a lot (note, 2 words) of heart this season. But seriously, who are these 10 iu fans that are so irate? and why should we be so frightened? will they throw a chair at us? Will these returning angry alumni be playing the game? Will they be coming to my home in Pennsylvania? because if they are, I’ll admit, I’m a little concerned; I’ll need to dust.