Before each Ohio State game, Eleven Warriors catches up with a media member who covers the opposing team to get his or her perspective on the Buckeyes' upcoming opponent.
Penn State
Nittany Lions
We had a lot to ask about this week as we welcome in longtime Penn State beat writer Ben Jones, who covers the Nittany Lions on Substack, for a Q&A on what went wrong for the Nittany Lions this season, their search for a new head coach and what must happen for Penn State to have a chance against Ohio State this weekend after four straight losses.
Penn State entered the season as a popular pick to win the national championship. It enters November with a 3-4 record and an interim head coach. How did it fall apart so badly for James Franklin and the Nittany Lions?
Jones: Well, isn't that just the multi-million-dollar question? I think there are probably two major angles to cover on this front. The first is that we sometimes forget preseason polling is just a bunch of educated guesses. Case in point:
- If you told me Team X had a bunch of [theoretically] talented portal receivers, experienced running backs, a veteran quarterback and a talented defense with a high-profile defensive coordinator – and then told me "Hey, this team is probably going to be good." That's not a stretch.
- If you told me that Team X had lost a first-round defensive star, a first-round offensive star that had been the catalyst of the offense, had replaced its entire receiving corps, hired a defensive coordinator with a history of laborious installs and was going to try and manage a two-running back system with a new running backs coach – and then told me this team might struggle, I'd believe that too.
The hard part is the margins, and it has always been the margins for Penn State. For as much as people like to give Franklin a hard time for his records in big games, it has very rarely been the case that Penn State has shown up and gotten blown out. Penn State has been prepared, and has played well enough to be in these games. But the little things tend not to go its way. I think this group was wound too tight because of expectations, not as good as it thought it was and when it lost to Oregon the wheels sort of fell off.
I tend to think UCLA is better than its record and the Northwestern game is a product of classic Pain In The Ass Northwestern Syndrome. Playing at Iowa is hard for everyone, let alone with a new quarterback and a general sense of [waves at everything].
I'm not sure there is one thing that led to this, but a lot of things.
Given what the expectations were entering the year, has this been the most disappointing season in Penn State football history?
Jones: Maybe in this era but the 90s had a few instances of things like this. Penn State started the ’97 season ranked No. 1 and lost three games. The ’99 season was a similar story before losing to Minnesota on a quirky combination of plays to start a three-game losing streak. I also tend to think the 2017 Penn State team was/is better than this one. But certainly, when a team starts the season with these sorts of expectations, it's in the realm.
Jim Knowles coached the nation’s best defense at Ohio State last season, but his Penn State defense hasn’t performed close to that level. What’s gone wrong for Knowles’ defense this season?
Jones: Another multi-million dollar question. It's a curious issue really. For as much as Oregon moved the ball against Penn State, the defense did a lot of bending but not breaking. So as much as Knowles might get knocked for having a defense that takes a while to learn, it wasn't as though Penn State was completely unprepared for that moment on defense.
Since then, I think UCLA caught them by surprise and giving up 22 points to Northwestern is not good but also not the same thing as giving up 35. I think Tony Rojas being injured, Dani Dennis-Sutton not getting much help and a general sense of deflated morale hasn't helped the cause.
Penn State not having its usual juice on defense is certainly a surprise. It also goes to show how important defense has been to the last decade of success.
Central Ohio native Ethan Grunkemeyer will make his second start this weekend as Penn State’s new quarterback after a season-ending injury to Drew Allar. What have you seen from Grunkemeyer so far?
Jones: I think we've seen the reason why Drew Allar was the starter. Grunk is athletic, tough and can throw a nice ball, but we can work under the assumption Penn State isn't recruiting quarterbacks who aren't checking off those boxes. He has been thrust into a tough situation and it will be interesting to see what he can do coming out of the off week, but I think what we've seen is a guy who makes you go "this is why he's at Penn State" and a guy who makes you go "this is why Allar was starting." He's somewhere between Tommy Stevens and Will Levis, which isn't the best, or worst, place to be.
Looking ahead to next season: What are the most important qualities for Penn State’s new coach to have, and who do you think that coach will ultimately be?
Jones: The second part I have no idea. Matt Rhule is the easy answer given his ties to the program and Penn State AD Pat Kraft [both were at Temple together] but I don't think he checks off the obvious home run box, even if he would do a good job. I generally believe that how well you do in one coaching situation is not how you'll do in every situation, but Rhule doesn't blow you away.
Honestly, I think Penn State just needs a coach who can do a lot of what Franklin did. If you can change coaches and get back to winning 10+ games you've done a pretty good job for yourself. That's always been the hard part about Franklin discourse – it's easy to say "fire the guy who doesn't win big games" but the room for regression has always been greater than the room for improvement. I think Penn State is a great job in the grand scheme of situations to inherit, but given the number of SEC openings and the lack of quality options on the market, Penn State is either going to end up hiring another young coach with its fingers crossed, overpay for someone who is somewhere else, or hire a coach that makes everyone go 'meh.'
In truth, the margin Penn State is trying to make up is an unknowable hiring box to check. You can say "you've gotta recruit well" but how this coach will do in marquee games in the future is just a lot of guessing. A lot of good coaches get hired to go to big programs and don't win big games. It's not something you can simply hire. So you hire on the knowable things – messaging, recruiting, leadership, not being a complete dick and the variety of program management things that got Penn State from 2012 to broadly where it is today. I think Penn State could maybe hire someone who is more Xs and Os inclined, but in this day and age, I think anyone who is relying on their head coach to draw up the game plan on his own is probably losing a lot of other battles elsewhere.
That's maybe the other surprising part about this search: you see programs fire guys with a sense of what was next, Penn State fired James Franklin and it's hard to see what the plan is other than an obnoxious level of "We're Penn State so something good will happen to us."
As a final thought on all of this: it's an interesting moment for Penn State because this is basically the first time the program has hired a coach who wasn't following Joe Paterno or taking the job while under sanctions. Penn State has never been in the market for a coach without weird shit impacting the job's value.
Getting back to this week’s game: What are the biggest things Penn State needs to do better than it’s done so far this season to have a chance against Ohio State?
Jones: The lack of Allar in this conversation changes the math here a bit but I think they've started to do what they need to do and that's give Kaytron Allen the ball until he keels over. Defensively, Penn State has to give up fewer chunk plays and get off the field on third down.
How do you see Saturday’s game playing out?
Jones: In theory, Penn State still has the same book it has been using for the last decade to keep these games close, but the situation is the situation. I think there is a world where Penn State is living in the purgatory of down-14 until it's down [insert here] sometime in the third quarter, but I don't see Penn State winning this game in a situation that doesn't involve equalizer injuries. If Penn State can run the ball it has a chance to keep this respectable, but that would be breaking some historical norms. All things being equal, I thought Penn State would have had a decent shot in this game, but things are no longer equal.
Fun tidbit: if Penn State beats Ohio State, it will face Indiana next week which would likely lead to the same team playing the No. 1 team in the nation two weeks in a row. Which would be nothing if not interesting.
