Official PSU - Indiana '25 game thread
- Thread starter Tom McAndrew
- Start date
We are not, obviously - to quote the Great James Franklin - even a good team.
We had absolutely nothing to lose…still could not muster the courage. Pathetic.
I agree...Terry was a rough as nails receiver, never afraid to go across the middle for one of Tony Sacca s many wild passes...
One of my biggest issues with CJF and his multiple staffs is the trust factor. They don't trust their players to make the critical play in crunch time. Adversely, the players didn’t trust or buy in to the coaches putting them in the best position to win during crunch time, on offense and defense. Case in point would be the OSU game in 2018, when Trace M was basically winning the game single handedly. Why wasn't the ball in his hands on 4th down instead of Sanders? Against UCLA they didn't trust his hand picked, high $ qb to throw before half. Today with Grunk, not trusting him to throw to seal the game. The D is just another story. Just my 2 cents.
It would be like if an Indiana receiver catches a pass in the middle of the field during the final drive. While the ref spots the ball and the chains are reset, the receiver gives the “first down” sign and jumps around like an idiot.
This nonsense almost never happens on offense during a critical game situation. I’m not sure why players on defense are such clowns.
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In the Indiana pylon game, our RB could have sealed the game by sliding down before the end zone. I see smart teams do this all the time. Not BGJ’s Penn State, though. His players gotta get that TD.
Quite a few of us have been pointing this out since he got here: he refuses to engage with the proven modern concept of offensive football: throw first to setup the run.
His schemes are designed almost exclusively around RPO, and the passing routes are quick outs to the sidelines, often at or even behind the line of scrimmage.
Opposing defenses know that Penn State doesn't throw over the middle of the field, and they know that they don't throw mid or deep routes. That's why they stack the line of scrimmage and play man-coverage.
You see what happened today: when we started using an aggressive passing attack, we erased a 13-point deficit and took the lead. Then Kotelnicki, like a pouting child, refused to acknowledge what was working, and went back to his ultra-conservative garbage, and we lost.
:36 ticks on the clock, we got Reynolds running a short out-route for a 5-yard pickup. Next down we have Singleton take a toss that actually went backwards, and should have kept the clock running, but the refs blew the call.
At no point did they try to get a meaningful amount of yardage that would move them into field goal range. That's what's frustrating: not that they lost, but that the play-calling didn't even give them a chance.