It’s your fault, Mike

FAIL

I’m not blaming this solely on the weather, but it was an undeniable factor today. One of our greatest strenghts is how balanced our offense is, but what we didn’t take into account was how much we needed that balance. If the first horribly called series showed us anything, it was that the weather took out one of our greatest strenghts in passing, and shifted the whole balance of the offense to the RBs. Granted, yes, we never should have called three pass plays on the first drive, especially knowing it was already windy, but we haven’t had a situation this year where the weather took out a portion of our game as much as it did today, and that hurt us. It’s also not something you can practice, which makes it even harder to adjust to.

Look, we had several chances to score TD’s and failed. That goal-line stand where we had, what, at least 4 chances to get in really hurt us. Just think — one of those turned TD could have saved us.

Clark going 9/23 is just…. horrible, and it makes me think there was still some lingering effects from that hit two weeks ago (I don’t buy that it was ALL the wind’s fault).

Some play calls were pretty shady, and Quarless catching a pass would have been nice in those clutch situations.

However, as I think most of us knew already, our defensive secondary is full of holes and gives receivers easy short receptions. The d-line did pretty well, but you know they beat us through the air… not the ground.

The one thing that is bringing me down the most right now is that Joe Pa in all likelihood won’t get another chance at a MNC. But here’s to the future and whoever steps into his shoes…

Allow Clark to make the difficult throws. This was especially effective with the weather. If he makes them, Iowa is screwed. If he doesn’t the strategy pays off. It really is a roll of the dice. Ferentz is a very good coach and sometimes the other team is just better.

I think Iowa is more talented than some here want to give them credit for, and maybe, just maybe, teams had enough film on this HD offense to make it look analog.

I mean, it really, really sucked. But remember that most of us were thinking 10 wins at best this year. I’m still pissed, but…

On to Pasadena!

suck it up, this is a great season!

…nothing is a given in college football. And I’m not just holding us fans accountable for all the hype and debates the last few weeks, but also – and most definitely – the sports writers/analysts/journalists/hacks, some of whom actually have a say in who deserves to go in what bowl.

I’m looking especially at Tom Dienhart, Pat Forde, and that insufferable weasel, Mark May. It’s one thing for them to assume we would go undefeated and earn an undeserved spot in the BCS championship, but it’s a whole other story when they tell us “We told you so” after today’s loss. Which they will.

(It’s better to wield the double edge sword than to be at its end)

No, they did not tell us anything of value. Don’t let them fool you into thinking otherwise. They didn’t predict our loss to an unranked Iowa team and it certainly does not validate their expertise of this game. Just about all of them said we would go undefeated and just about all of us (especially yours truly) said the same thing.

Just like us, they are just flying by the seat of their pants on a Lazy-Boy recliner, playing Sunday Morning Quarterback, all the while utilizing hindsight to their advantage: all disguised as professional expertise.

Now they’re going to say the BCS is a terrific system because, as this weekend showed, the season works itself out eventually.

And what are we saying? That Joe Pa needs to retire. That we need to open up the playbook. That it’s JayPa’s fault. That we’re too conservative. That we can’t win when it counts.

Back to 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 we go!

I swear, no other sport screws with our collective American heads like college football. They should torture Guantanamo detainees with this God foresaken game and its byzantine logic system.

…the refs right now. or at least that one line judge that on the final drive called that insanely horrible pass interference call, spotted the ball twice at least 1 yrd past where greene went down and yet failed to call intentional grounding when stanzi was still in the pocket…bite me damn ref!!!

the worst part was the fact that i was in a bar full of ohio state fans that were enjoying it. i wanted to yell out to them “hey you mother f-ers…this just screwed your chance at the rose bowl idiots!”

tomorrow, i will be happy about the rose bowl. but tonight…tonight i mourn for joepa.

this was his year.

Did PSU even convert a 3rd down in the second half? Um, that’s a big deal, guys, especially when you spent the 1st half abusing Iowa by always gaining one or two more yards than you needed.

Two, as has been pointed out before, you’re still going to the freaking Rose Bowl.

Last, I rather like PSU and most of you fans, so I sort of wish this huge win for Iowa could have come against, like, OSU. But I value my folks’ feelings over yours, so… don’t take it personally, y’know.

P.S. Please do not lose to MSU.

that kool-aid tasted delicious, a little watered down right now, but hey its the name of the game i guess. im kinda numb, but we did it to ourselves. 9 points from the red zone instead of 21, right there is the game. play calling was sub par, as goes the same with execution. we were sloppy, thats the bottom line. you can sit and bicker about the holdings, the P.I. call, and the crappy spots (believe me i already have). we really shouldn’t have been in the position to HAVE to complain about the calls. Here’s to getting our moxie back and finishing out this season, we’ve already exceeded expectations. lets take it to the Rose Bowl and show ’em what for.

That “Greene-Out” / "Black-Out.

It paled in comparison to a 107,000 White-Out in Happy Valley.

Victory: Penn State.

but, things really wouldn’t have been any better if we get the 23-21 win. We would have gotten beaten up by that just as bad. Especially with the whomping TT just put on OK State. I think I’m almost a little more sane right now than I would have been had we gotten dicked over with a 12-0 record.

Want to make sure we didn’t have any casualties after this one…

It was a hard fought game on both sides, and Iowa did more when they needed to. I think most of the major points have been touched on – soft defense at times when we really didn’t need it, not taking advantage of early opportunities, questionable playcalling at times, and Clark’s worst performance this season.

I think one thing that is starting to kill us is our inability (or unwillingness – chicken/egg scenario) to blitz. The front 4 can only do so much every week. Combo that with our desire to drop 7 into a weak zone, and opposing receivers are finding the soft spots very easily right now.

On the offensive side, the O-Line had a roller coaster day. They started shitty, solidified during the middle half of the game, and then reverted to shitty. Dropped balls, missed opportunities, yadda yadda yadda.

Let me take nothing away from Iowa – played their game (mistakes and all), and took advantage of our shortcomings. At the end of the day, they had more points and that’s all that matters.

At the end of the day, we have to suck it up and move on. We have our choice of seasons (of recent memory) to replicate – one good (there was an Orange Bowl with that one) and one not as good (something about finishing 9-3). This is still a very good football team that has, to this point, outperformed the vast majority of expectations set out by anyone with an opinion. There is always the chance that one of the cogs doesn’t work one week – you just hope that the other pieces pick up enough to cover the lapse. Today, too much of the machine was broken. Make the repairs and move on to next week.

It may not be perfect, but it’s still been, and can end up being, a pretty damn impressive season. At the very least, we’ll have a few caged back-monkeys to take from this season.

Tech and Bama both won tough games today. Goind undefeated isn’t outrageous anymore for either. I think we’ll look back at this as a blessing, much like the UM loss in 2005.

and had a few drinks. Had some fun. Got home and I’m still bummed. I’ll take the Rose Bowl as (hopefully) a fairly sweet consolation prize, but this one stings. After going into the season with cautiously optimistic expectations, I can’t complain too much — but shit. So close.

I wish the refs put two more seconds on the clock. I wish Tom Osbourne was retiring. I wish M*rell* had been borderline retarded.

But none of those things happened, and we still lost. I think this one hurts more because it’s my fifth and final season as a student…I don’t know what to say or do. I hate this, especially since drinking hasn’t helped, and the Bills started sucking this year, so I don’t have them to rest on. Just once I wanted a shot at a MNC in my lifetime. And now I have to wait. This sucks.

I see the PI call on Scrioitto the more and more I want to puke. It was an awful call that in the end led to a drive that cost us the game. Nevermind the missed blatant hold on Iowa. Yes, they won, yes the defense broke on the last drive. But it absolutely kills me watching Big Ten Officials SUCK ASS when PSU plays. The whiffed calls on holds 2 weeks ago vs OSU, this week on the PI and the blatant missed holds on Iowa. Just gives me that felling of 02 when Joe basically killed an official after the Iowa loss.

We should win the Big Ten outright, just sucks that the national title dreams went down the shitter with some pretty shitty calls.

and Mark May can f*cking suck it for his helmet sticker to Iowa’s kicker… what a f*cking douche.

is when the game was lost……………….redzone offense terrible, you can’t settle for field goals. Someone had to get them “up” and punch it in, couldnt do it, iowa’s d was quite good, so props to them.

I am not going to begin to talk about the “other bowl” that we hope for.

focus number 1 = indiana

I say we score 80 on them to let out our frustrations

at least dc faced the press after the worst game he could’ve played and took responsiblility for the loss, even though it wasn’t all his fault (drops, o-line, defense, play-calling)
I respect the hell out of that guy right now, compared to last year when the qb didn’t come out, whether it was his decision or the coaches’

that loss really sucked, if psu plays lilke that vs MSU they will lose again, forget the rose bowl

We have a great future ahead of us because this team is not about one player. We are going to end up in a great bowl and Clark will be back at the helm next year with alot of good players returning. Hopefully this is the first year of a new era.

It’s been 2 straight games of Clark sucking, he has not performed against any top level teams.

Lots of bad, bad, bad decisions. He needed to take care of the ball, thats it….he didn’t do that.

The QB was still hearing bells and should never have started the game. Worst of all, he couldn’t raise his head up, like a man, following the game and during interviews. Not a leader.

I know it’s a horrible loss and we’re all searching for answers, but come on, people.

did anyone notice that Clark grew a mustache? doesn’t he know you don’t grow a mustache after 9 wins? That is why Penn State lost the game my friends. Every sports fan knows about lucky socks and all of those things.

Mustache = Loss

1. Daryll Clark. Sorry, bro. You failed
2. Coverage in our secondary
3. Offensive play calling
4. Blitzes featuring Josh Hull
5. Dropped passes

Coaches tried to get too cute, it backfired. Coaches tried to blitz from the outside, none of them ever, ever got there. Coaches didn’t run any option (scared of DC’s head injury, I guess) in the red zone.

Things that win:
My bank account, as I don’t need to attend the BCS championship or stock up on every single item that has “PSU 2008 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS” on it.

Thing that makes me happy:
We’re furious about a potential 1-loss season. I remember very recently where we’d be overjoyed with an 8-4 season. This is good in my book.

I think the most heart breaking thing about this loss is seeing and hearing it in Joe in his post game press conference. There is a sense that he knows it is over. This was the last chance in his career to go to the National Championship. I hate knowing he was this close but is coming up short. He deserved another shot.
  Yes we have great talent coming back, but we are losing better talent.
  Does anyone think we will come this close gain anytime soon? With Joe as head coach? Does this make his decision for him?
This sucks

You can’t blame Clark for a poor blocking job by the O-line. There were numerous plays that showed an O-linemen helping Clark off the ground and then hitting his own chest referenceing “my bad”. And its also the reason Royster couldn’t get in the endzone when we had to kick 3 field goals.

It’s an age old saying:

You win as a team
You lose as a team

Two things stand out from yesterday. Clark looked completely ineffective;you have to wonder if the injury he suffered last week was worse that reported. Is there a bye week scheduled for next year ? If so, schedule The Little Sisters of the Poor University; anything to avoid a layoff.

If we beat Indiana and smack Sparty in the mouth we win the Big Ten Championship.

That’s something to play for.

1. I really think this loss hurt Joe about as much as any in his career.

2. What is the deal with AJ Wallace? Is he still hurt or just not any good?

3. I thought PSU should have gone for 2 after their last TD to make it a 24-14 game. I understand that if you don’t get it, you are only up by 8, but i thought it with the ways we were using D-Will we could have had alot of success on a 2 point play.

I would have spent my off-week working on correcting offensive issues exposed by Ohio State. I would not have spent my off-week working on gimmick plays with Derrick Williams at QB. I have never been a fan of this formation, especially when you are replacing a QB who already has the threat of run in his arsenal.

It appears to me that teams are slowly drifting back to the steadfast strategy in stopping Penn State’s offense: stop the run and take away the deep ball. In addition, added to this strategy recently is the blitz on all passing downs idea. The way to destroy this strategy is to complete passes over the middle. I think Iowa was greatly aided by the wind, which took away our deep ball, so all they had to do was dare us to throw over the middle, which we attempted, but were unsuccessfull.

http://www.fannation.com/si_blogs/the_sweep/posts/21761

Thoughts?

Twenty-two 19-22 boys/men played a bad game. Maybe they weren’t focused, maybe they were rusty, maybe they cracked under the pressure, maybe they were cold, maybe Iowa was pretty good. I was there, right by where the players walked off the field. I could see tears in Maurice Evans eyes. I don’t like a lot of things Colin Cowherd says, but he talks a lot about how college football fans have a hard time keeping in perspective the fact that these are 18-22 year old kids whose emotions fluctuate all over the place, have limited time to practice, and have class to worry about. Winning a national title in college football is freaking hard. Yeah, okay we shouldn’t have lost to Iowa. Clark was awful. The defense made Ricky Stanzi look like Joe Montana. It sucks. And it really sucked being there. But, we are still in the driver’s seat for the Big Ten title and the Rose Bowl. We should contend for the same next year too.

My freshman year was 1998. These last 4 years have been so, so much better than everything from the Minnesota game my sophomore year through 2004. When I think about it that way, the fact that this loss hurts as bad as it does is a good thing.

pretty much to a fault when it comes to PSU football. And I didn’t even realize it before, but still had a little bit of the kool-aid left and so I took a sip of it and started having these hallucinations.

And one of the visions I had was about this team, last year, that went 10-0 before they lost their first game. Some weird things happened in the weeks that followed and they still ended up playing for a national championship.

This is college football, after all. Strange stuff happens in college football. When Illinois beat Ohio State in their next to last game of the season last year, I’m pretty sure the “experts” used the phrase “and their hopes to play in another national championship game . . . crushed” in some of their analysis.

Just sayin’.