Prove It
I was out last Saturday morning running errands and I saw so many Penn State people–head to toe in Penn State pride and eager to chat with each other. “I’ve got a good feeling about this,” we all agreed. “It’ll be a lackluster first half and then they’ll get it in the end; they’ve done that all season,” one guy assured me. And I believed him because that’s exactly what I was expecting to watch too. I had my hopes up. I thought we could pull off a win.
What a heartbreaker. A missed opportunity to finally prove ourselves to, well, everyone.
The best and worst of it is that we probably could have won had we not shot ourselves in the foot. Oregon is obviously a very good team, and in some ways they outmatched us. But in some ways we outmatched them too. Nobody expected us to show such an explosive offense against Oregon’s defense. We put up 37 points against the number one team in the nation!
Penn State amassed 518 yards of offense. Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen each ran for over 100 yards. The offense averaged over eight yards a carry. Tyler Warren caught seven passes for 84 yards. Tre Wallace caught four for 59 yards and a touchdown. Drew Allar, with a defender hanging from his shirt, threw a miracle to Harrison Wallace on fourth down to bring us within eight points in the fourth quarter.
Of course, Drew Allar also threw two interceptions: one was essentially a pick six and the other pretty much ended the game. So. There was that.
Nobody also expected our defense to struggle. Or, a missed field goal on our opening drive of the second half. Or, that we’d hand so many yards and first downs to Oregon committing dumb fouls.
The refs didn’t help. I’m not one to complain much about officiating but my goodness. It was hard to overlook in this game.
"To be quite frank, we also just made a lot of mistakes," defensive tackle Dvon J-Thomas said. "That's a credit to them. When you have such a talented team and you're playing at an elite level, the margin of error is very, very small. Coach Franklin alluded to that after the game. The margin of error is so small, so slim in these games that it makes all the difference."
In the end, despite the disappointment, Penn State proved they could absolutely go toe to toe #1 Oregon. Had the Nittany Lions played cleaner, the outcome may well have been in our favor. Our team never stopped battling, not even when they were down 28-10. They could have let Oregon put the game away at that point, but they proved their resilience and their right to belong among the best in the nation.
In this new era of college football, as Franklin said, Penn State’s season has only just begun. So, patch up your hearts, Nittany Nation. We host SMU on December 21 and, despite it being a noon game, it’s an official White Out! Go State! Beat the Mustangs!
