My Grades for Penn State against Eastern Michigan

With this game I got the score almost exactly right and the point spread exact with my 31-3 prediction. Usually I like to wait until Monday to post these, that gives me time to make sure I'm looking at this objectively and time to revise my own blog's grades to what they really should be, but I know already how they did since it was a 34-6 win and if anything, I run the risk of being too generous. Since the weekly grades are no longer a fixture on BSD, it looks like I'm going to be doing this every week, someone has to give them a report card after every game.

Speaking of that, don't be surprised if I give retroactive grade boosts down the line if our opponents exceed expectations. I already did that with the Indiana State grades since they're 3-1 including a 44-16 beating of Western Kentucky, an FBS Sun Belt Team. Anyways, here's the previous games in case you're interested.

Week One's grades against Indiana State
Week Two's grades against Alabama
Week Three's grades against Temple

Overall - B: After our game against Temple, many were absolutely certain that this was a 4-8 or 5-7 season in the making, no matter how much myself and many others insisted that they aren't the same Temple team we blew out 47-0 in 2006. I was right, they pounded Maryland 38-7 and sit at 3-1 with three blowout wins and a loss to us. While we did play a poor game, we didn't do so against a basement dwelling MAC team. THIS, however, was a basement dwelling MAC team, and by contrast we did quite well, rolling to a 34-6 blowout. In this game we saw more positives than negatives, many more actually, hence the "B" grade, but the team did get off to an uncomfortably slow start. I predicted another 2009 Akron but isntead we got another 2007 Buffalo. The biggest positives were the passing game and the special teams. The coaching staff must read message boards because I'd been calling for them to get rid of Evan Lewis for weeks and have Anthony Fera handle kicking duties because that's exactly what I saw this week. Plus the coverage looked better. The only negatives I saw were that the rushing game struggled against a bad MAC team, gaining just 110 yards, and that the defense, although great once again, took a real step back even before Mauti and Lynn went out.

Offense - C+: It feels nice to be giving the offense a higher grade than what they'd been earning lately. The offense last week kept itself from earning a failing grade by winning, they only got a C against Indiana State (and that was after reconsideration), and got a failing grade against Alabama (although I might bump that up after the way Arkansas looked if Bama does the same thing next week to Florida), but this week looked good at times. I would have given them a higher grade but the running game just didn't look that good and the offense itself didn't get going until midway through the second quarter. It should have been 41-6 in that they left points on the field (but then again Indiana State should have been 48-7). McGloin looked best, proving that perhaps the Alabama game results were an abberation while Bolden had flashes of brilliance (that pass to Smith taken 71 yards to the house) and flashes of stupidity (that pick that gave Eastern Michigan 3 points). Many reserves saw signifficant playing time, even more than against Indiana State it seemed. We finished with 468 yards of offense. Our previous best was our 359 yard effort against Indiana State.

Defense - A-: Remember how I said the defense took a step back from last week? With the way the defense has been doing this year that means that instead of doing outstanding they did excellent instead. When you have a defense like ours, it's hard to find real criticisms. However, one thing I didn't like was that Eastern Michigan had 202 passing yards and 270 total yards for the game. They had more passing yards than Temple had total yards. Even Alabama only had 163 passing yards. But we did get three turnovers and five sacks. The defense is still playing with intensity. The grade would have been in the B-range except for the fact that they stoppped them in the red zone twice. I know right now 34-14 or 34-10 wouldn't matter but it shows that this team won't fold in the red zone like they did last year. Holding opponents to field goals in big games is something that could make the difference between as good as 10-2 and as poor as 7-5. Especially notable in that those stops were made late in the game. As much as I hope Lynn and Mauti are ok in the end, I think our defense will still survive but not be quite as good. Like in 2009 when sometimes Lee and/or Bowman would be out the D still looked dominant. One bit of trivia is that this team has yet to allow 20 first downs this year.

Special Teams - B-: It feels good to be able to give the special teams a good grade and not complain about their lackluster performance like I've done every week so far this season. Their best game to this point was Indiana State and only because of that kickoff returned for a touchdown. Take that away and their C+ in the game becomes a C- or C/D even (if I straddle the line between two letter grades, like a B- or C+, I give a B/C in that case to show it's on the line, worst straddler is a D/F since there's no F/0 except as joke only in big games tha's a pun on tornadoes and sucking). But this game we finally see the special teams come alive, with Anthony Fera as the kicker being the biggest surprise. As I said before, I'm certain they read here, how else would they have thought to do that? Also, the coverage looked a lot better, and we didn't miss a field goal. The punting game also looked a lot better with the only exception being that the punt return game still hasn't improved much, but it's a slow process it seems. One thing I was happy about seeing was the blocked punt in the second quarter. The whole special teams seems a lot better just by getting rid of Evan Lewis. Even the punting game, totally unrelated to the kicking game, seemed a lot better than before.

Gameball goes to - Matt McGloin: I wasn't sure whether to give it to Mauti, Lynn, or McGloin, but I settled on McGloin because of his three touchdown passes. Before this game, I didn't think McGloin was anything but an interception machine with a neckbeard but that was sure proven wrong as he sliced and diced the Eastern Michigan secondary going 14 of 17 for 220 yards. I know it's just Eastern Michigan but at least we're doing what we're supposed to, so that means maybe 9-3 is not unlikely.

It was over when: Penn State realized they were playing Eastern Michigan. After spending the first 20 minutes of the game hitting the snooze button, the offense finally came alive and delivered a beating to the Eagles. Eastern Michigan didn't score until it was 31-0 and in the end they were held to even less points than Indiana State managed against us, even if they did score twice.

Next Opponent - Indiana: Technically our conference opener, the Hoosiers haven't looked that good against anyone this year, so that's a good sign that they won't pose much of a threat against us. However, we should be cautious because they usually cover the spread against us even if they have no businesses keeping it within 100 points. I say we blow them out but between 20 and 25 point win for us. I got it dead on for this game (look at the Temple review), so why not two in a row?