Official PSU - Villanova game thread
- Thread starter Tom McAndrew
- Start date
Sunday Column: Penn State Offense Plays A Too-Familiar Tune During Final Tuneup for Ducks
Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE. You might have had mixed feelings watching Kaytron Allen run into...
fortheblogy.com
Except, historically, Singleton is the guy who makes guys miss, with Allen being the bruiser who is sometimes shut down by defenses who can meet him near the LoS before he gets going.
Again, this isn’t new. Last year there were games and stretches where Allen wasn’t effective, and Singleton carried the load .. and games and stretches where Singleton wasn’t effective and Allen carried the load.
And each time, posters acted like this had never happened before and however that particular RB was performing at that moment was who he really was.
And they were always wrong, because the tables would eventually turn.
Worst 52-6 win in the history of Penn State football.
Sorry, not seeing it that way.
Singleton has better straight ahead speed, but fewer moves, more likely to be brought down by single tacklers. Allen has improved, and IMO is the better of the two for now. Pena does provide another option for running the ball .
I also have become a Kaytron Allen convert. He is simply the better back at this point. I think Singleton is still the better 40 time, but Allen has certainly added some speed this year. I don’t understand how Singleton is brought down by these shoe string tackles all the time. Nick is often one shoe string tackle away from breaking a long run.
As a long time Penn State fan, I thought the last minute of the game was an embarrassment. Joe Paterno must have been rolling over in his grave. We are ahead 52 - 0 and Franklin is calling time outs and questioning the officials. Why humiliate the other team? Let them play and score if they can. If Joe was still coaching, he would have been running the back into the line on every play from the start of the fourth quarter on. He would have been playing a plain vanilla defense. Penn State used to be known for good sportsmanship and fair play. Not now.
Spoken like somebody who didn't see the game.
Pena has good speed and had good success on reverses vs Villanova. But conference opponents will have defenders with better speed. We'll have to wait and see if he'll have similar success going forward.
I don’t sweat the first three games at all. The only question is whether they got enough prep to play well vs Oregon in the conference opener?
We’ll know the answer in two weeks.
Would it be better to look put together our first 3 games or what we saw our first 3 games?
Yeah, I agree. 3-0, no major (or even minor) injuries that I know of. And stuff to work on on one side of the ball. I think if they played perfectly on offense in the non conf games, both the team and the fanbase would have an overblown sense of confidence.
A health does of doubt should be a good motivation for the team. And probably the fanbase.
CJF has spoken about this before - he believes these real game situations against the other team's #1s are extremely valuable experience for the 3s & 4s. He has a point - this is the future of the program, so it's important to get them on field in real game situations where the other team's #1 are motivated to score.
Exactly- anybody acting like they know what we've got based on these three games is delusional.
Agree 100%. Nick is powerful, quick, fast, has good hands, is a good blocker, and works his *** off. However, he’s NEVER been the guy who makes people miss. I’ve watched almost every one of his games since he was in 7th grade. He has always run past people or lowered his shoulder and run over them but would rarely break arm tackles. He’s exactly the same now as he was back then.
I have no idea why he can’t break many tackles, but he’s never been the guy to make a move in space. Maybe because he was always so much better than everyone else and got so used to it that he never learned how to.
I think both can be true. I don’t know about embarrassment, but I was a little uncomfortable with the timeouts. It’s possible to give your backups valuable time and coach them up without burning all your timeouts up 7 TDs on an FCS team.
Sigh. Again, this is the type of stuff that's been repeated. Then, the next game, Singleton runs roughshod over everyone and Allen gets stopped.
I remember commenting last year, early on, that the one thing I was seeing is that they kept trying to run Singleton on dives and off tackle, when he needed space and to get outside ... and they kept running Allen to the outside, when he should be doing what Singleton was doing. Wouldn't you know, eventually they switched to more of that, and both backs benefitted.
Folks were also saying Singleton went down too easily - that he was being shoestringed tackled. Then, suddenly, he starting running people over and breaking big gains. And making people miss.
This was against Villanova. Things are different against better defenses and better schemed defenses.
At various points this season, we'll see the same folks clamoring for Allen to be the featured back wondering what happened to Allen, and trying to pretend like something changed with Singleton, and that explains why he's doing so well.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
As for Pena ... they're using that to set up a play, or a series of plays down the road. They ran that same play at least 4 times. They're getting it on film so they can use it as a misdirect later, when they need it. He's not going to be a consistent jet sweep option, or otherwise used as a running threat ... sure, they'll pull it out when it fits the scenario, but based on Kotelnicki's history, that's the start of one of his gimmick trees. We'll likely see reverses, fakes, laterals, etc. off of that.
Last edited:
Did Villanova still have their 1s in? That's a shame that their coach didn't give his bench players a chance to run some plays in the Beave.
Through three games, PSU has outscored its opponents 132-17. That averages out to roughly 44-6 per game, a 38-point margin per game. Imagine what it would be if they were good.
OK but you still have to have superior speed to get to the corner. I'm sure it's a lot easier to outrun Villanova defenders than OSU defenders.
Yes but look who we've played.
Compare Allar's stats to Sayin & Moore:
Allar (SR): 64.8%, 626 yds, 4 TD, 1 INT, 56.0 QBR
Sayin (SO): 78.9%, 779 yds, 8 TD, 3 INT, 75.4 QBR (they played Texas)
Moore ((JR): 78.1%, 657 yds, 7 TD, 1 INT, 90.1 QBR
Allar's rating is 16th in the BiG and he's played weaker opponents
And 14 of those points and probably half the yardage surrendered was against our 3s and 4s. 14 of the 17 points were scored in final 30 seconds of the Nevada and Villanova games. PSU's starters have given up a FG in their first 3 games.
It may be that at this point he is who he is - I hope I am wrong and divine intervention occurs over the bye week.
This might be my biggest concern after 3 games. One of the reasons PSU was expected to be a big time contender was because OSU and UO were breaking in new QBs while Allar had tons of experience. Very few top contenders had returning QBs this year. Well Sayin and Moore have answered the call, emphatically. They both appear quite capable of leading their teams to a very good season.
We've seen this for decades at PSU, going back to the Paterno years. We never seem able to have a first year starting QB find immediate success, while our competitors seem to do it regularly. This has been a concern of mine for a long, long time. I'm not overly shocked with what we've seen from Allar, but the gap between him and the others appears non-existent at best.
Last edited:
Does it matter? They were trying to score and took a timeout to maximize their chances. Should we have stopped trying to prevent them from scoring just because we had a big lead? Franklin expects the players to play hard until the clock reads 00:00, and it holding himself and the coaches to the same standard. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
It matters when someone is disappointed in the Villanova coaches for not giving their bench players a chance to play. Facts matter (well, at least to me).