As you said I hope they were trying to present a certain look for the sake of the film. Despite the mistakes, I thought Clark was poised and confident and made some nice plays. The throw to Zug early on was perfect and he had a nice touch on his throws. The one to Butler just before the out of bounds throw was a little off but catchable because of the touch he put on it.
Wisconsin is beatable but I’m beginning to worry a little about THEM.

Man, what a snoozer as far as the play calling went. I am sure we are saving a good deal for the meat of our schedule but I am having flashbacks and cold sweats on the short yardage playcalling.
Hopefully that got all of the ‘road jitters’ and ‘early AM start’ crap out of the way for us for the rest of the season. Let’s get rolling again, fellas!
And to the equipment staff: you guys were more effective than PU’s redzone D. Nice…

is a win. Workmanlike, pretty much error free, and physical. I’ll take it.

Stupid as it sounds, I think the turf played a major part. We had some nice holes that never saw a player due to him laying on his butt with divots flying around. Screwed up a drive’s momentum a few times.

As noted before (most recently by TMEric), why aren’t we carrying multiple sets of shoes to away games? And if we are, did we change?

Whatever. Boring? Yes. But lots of big plays, like 10 yards or longer. Norwood will indeed add a lot.

I also agree: Astorino looks like the real thing.

I thought he was poised and hung in there under pressure. He made some good throws, and really only the one down the middle to Quarless in traffic sticks out to me as bad.

The only thing I wish is that he would actually look to run a little more. There were at least two instances where the pocket collapsed and he got away, and definitely had room for a nice gain. There’s nothing wrong with looking for the pass, but not at the expense of easy yards.

is going to be very good, one of the best young players I have seen in years.

Also, Josh Hull player better…not great but better…good for him

I’m with you on Clark…he wasn’t terrible or anything, just kinda meh. 69% completion rate is good, but given a lot of the throws (screens, short routes) it’s not particularly amazing. And Purdue should give a gameball to their turf, it led the freaking team in tackles.

game was a little closer than the score (2 late TDs by Ill.), but again, we have a blue print on how to beat THEM. Hopefully this year Joe looks at the film instead of ignoring it last year ala App. State. Comment on Kenny Chesney in the booth with Herbie and Musberger during the Auburn – Vandy game. That guy is teeny tiny! Holy cow!

A good win for State and Illinois’ game makes our win more impressive.

Man, do I feel silly ranking Auburn so high at the start of the season.

Credit the Vandy students. They are a classy bunch. It’s their first win over Auburn since 1955. Probably the biggest win in decades. And they didn’t rush the field.

GO VANDY! ACT LIKE YOU’VE BEEN THERE BEFORE!

Very business-like for the Lions today. That’s what good teams do. Sadly, this was a good defense day for us…

http://www.offthetracks.org/2008/10/managing-expectations.html

I think it was conservative playcalling for a few reasons:
-road big 10 game
-confidence a “vanilla” game would win it
-didn’t want to show too much for Wisky or OSU to practice against (though I guess they have plenty of film from the other games…but maybe they want them to think we’ll still play conservative on the road…or perhaps we really are just going to play conservative on the road…ugh) Or perhaps even with the way the field conditions were they didn’t want to try to do anything too “fancy” and get tripped up.

I was amused, though, at a bunch of Purdue fans I was sitting near, who had the gall to call us overrated (this was when we were up “only” 20-0). Apparently they had such low expectations for themselves that they thought they’d get blown out more. I mean heck, our defense practically shut them out (one fourth down conversion away from it), and our offense was tackled by their field more than their players.

Also: apparently I need to speak a bit quieter when talking to my friends, since I really didn’t mean to say it loud for others to hear, but I mentioned to one how Purdue Pete looks like a child molester, and I guess the uncle of the guy in the mascott costume (or one of the alternates) was sitting right in front of me…whoops.

By the way, Indiana drivers are nuts. I was cut off no less than 4 times on the trip there and back (apparently half a car length between me and the car in front of me is enough “merging” space for them), and one of those times I was literally run off the road (as in my options were get into an accident, or to go off into the median at 80-85 MPH.

Is it me, or does it seem that all of Pryor’s passes float just a bit too much…I mean they’re beautiful passes, but I’m just surprised he doesn’t get picked off more often.

Wisconsin is driving me F*ING INSANE. How can NO ONE on their team be covering wr’s coming across the middle?

Why can’t these teams defense play like that against us

Well, one good part of the OSU comeback is that Bielma is a smarmy little piece of shit in my mind, and it’s nice to watch their season fall apart before his smarmy zipped-up jacketed eyes.

What the F? Is this now the NFL with the score-commercial-kickoff-commercial sequence?

Christ.

to end a game

Each of these teams has given us the basic blueprint to beat each of them. Shut down the run and force the throw. Everidge is not a great QB and neither is Pryor. Pryor is basically like Juice Williams, with less accuracy and experience. Take away their legs and make them win it with their arms, and I believe Penn State will walk away with two more W’s on the road.

Now maybe this is a stupid question, but does Wisconsin’s loss today hurt PSU in the long run. First of all considering that they hadn’t lost in 16 straight homegames coming into the OSU game should it make us feel comfortable to believe that they would lose in two straight. Secondly we are coming off of a 14 point win against a Purdue team with one of the worst defense in the nation and our offense didn’t look solid although I put some blame on the turf which was horrible. Finally, our redzone offense and third down offense just didn’t show up today at one point i remember we had only converted on 2/7 third downs. However, one good thing is Pryor and Wells are a tandom comparable to Clark and Royster and they both broke apart the Wisconsin defense (Pryor had 144 yards passing and Wells had 168 yards rushing). With all this said I still think we can win the game I just wanted a little insight.

We Are…… Penn State.

Mike,

I guess I’m in the minority here but I thought the playcalling was too cute at times. I clearly recall a 2nd and 1 situation early in the game where we ended up calling an end-around play to D-Will which got blown up for no gain.

I also wouldn’t call yesterday’s game “tight” the whole way through. We held a 17-0 3rd quarter lead and 20-0 4th quarter lead. While such leads may not be 100% comfortable, I never really felt Purdue had a chance to string together a serious rally the way our defense was containing them.

With that being said, I anticipate us opening up the playbook more for these next few games starting in Madison next weekend…