The Big Ten announced their All Conference team this evening, and Penn State cleaned house.

2008 All-Big Ten Conference Football Team
As selected by CONFERENCE COACHES

FIRST TEAM	OFFENSE	SECOND TEAM
Daryll Clark, Penn State	Quarterback	Adam Weber, Minnesota
Shonn Greene, Iowa	Running Back	Chris "Beanie" Wells, Ohio State
Javon Ringer, Michigan State	Running Back	Evan Royster, Penn State
Eric Decker, Minnesota	Receiver	Arrelious Benn, Illinois
Derrick Williams, Penn State	Receiver	David Gilreath, Wisconsin
A.Q. Shipley, Penn State	Center	Rob Bruggeman, Iowa
Seth Olsen, Iowa	Guard	Stefen Wisniewski, Penn State
Rich Ohrnberger, Penn State	Guard	Kraig Urbik, Wisconsin
Alex Boone, Ohio State	Tackle	Xavier Fulton, Illinois
Gerald Cadogan, Penn State	Tackle	Bryan Bulaga, Iowa
Brandon Myers, Iowa	Tight End	Garrett Graham, Wisconsin
Kevin Kelly, Penn State	Kicker	Brett Swenson, Michigan State
FIRST TEAM	DEFENSE	SECOND TEAM
MITCH KING, IOWA	Line	Jammie Kirlew, Indiana
Corey Wootton, Northwestern	Line	Brandon Graham, Michigan
Aaron Maybin, Penn State	Line	Willie VanDeSteeg, Minnesota
Jared Odrick, Penn State	Line	Mike Newkirk, Wisconsin
Greg Jones, Michigan State	Linebacker	Brit Miller, Illinois
James Laurinaitis, Ohio State	Linebacker	Pat Angerer, Iowa
Navorro Bowman, Penn State	Linebacker	Marcus Freeman, Ohio State
Vontae Davis, Illinois	Defensive Back	Amari Spievey, Iowa
Otis Wiley, Michigan State	Defensive Back	Traye Simmons, Minnesota
MALCOLM JENKINS, OHIO STATE	Defensive Back	Allen Langford, Wisconsin
Anthony Scirrotto, Penn State	Defensive Back	Jay Valai, Wisconsin
Zoltan Mesko, Michigan	Punter	Ryan Donahue, Iowa

 

That's ten Nittany Lions on the first team and twelve overall. But this was the coaches poll. You can see how the writers voted after the jump.

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Quarterback

I normally start with the offensive line because, well, the offense starts with the offensive line. Well today we start with Daryll Clark, who did in fact get his swagger back. His 341 passing yards were the most a Penn State quarterback has thrown since 2003 and that, along with the rest of his ridiculous stat line, was enough to earn him a Big Ten Player Of The Week award for the second time this season.

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Some of the players on the team have been quoted discussing internal strife over play calling.  It was a topic after the Iowa game, in which it seemed like the coaches weren't playing to win.  Well now it sounds like the players are echoing some of the sentiment expressed on the interweb over the past couple of week.

"Obviously we've got a lot of guys on the team who have played a lot of football, we know what we're talking about when we see a defense thrown at us," Butler said. "Sometimes we got a little carried away with 'We should be running this play or that play.' Whatever play they call, let's execute it, and let's not get carried away with what plays we aren't running."

He's not the only one speaking up:

"We were running the ball a lot, and then these last two games, we've kind of gotten away from it a little bit," Shipley said. "We started to question that a little bit. We're all guilty of it."

[...]

"It's been a slight problem," Clark said. "We have to get away from it. Regardless of what the call is, it's not like it's new. ... If Jay [Paterno] calls it, if Galen [Hall] calls it, go out and make it happen. That's that."

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We all expected more offense in this game, but I think we can all agree the end result came out ok. Let's take a look at how the offense did.

Offensive Line

The line had trouble creating running lanes as Ohio State did an excellent job of clogging the middle. But they were getting a nice push allowing Royster to gain three or four yards when there was seemingly nothing there. I thought Landolt was having problems holding a few blocks on Gibson, but Cadogen had an excellent game. Penn State was often pulling him down the line as a lead blocker. It's quite satisfying watching a linebacker line up thinking he's about to bring down Royster for no gain just before big ol' #76 comes around the corner and pancakes him. Ohio State is claiming moral victory because they held us sixty yards under our season average in rushing yards. I'm claiming moral victory because we rushed for sixty yards over their defensive average.

They had their hands full with pass protection as Ohio State was blitzing heavily on passing downs. Again I thought Cadogen did extremely well. Everyone else was ok and they only gave up one sack.

Final Grade: B

Running Backs

As I mentioned before Evan Royster had a tough time finding any open space to run. The Ohio State defensive line did an excellent job of blocking the running lanes. But he did what good backs do in those situations. He followed the push of his offensive line and got three yards where other backs would try to bounce outside and lose two. He was never once tackled for a loss. But there were a few cases where he missed a blitz pickup, and he made a poor decision in cutting a screen pass inside instead of following his blockers in the red zone. He may have cost us a touchdown there.

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All of the wrong things were happening to Penn State's offense -- botched snaps, fumbles, dropped passes, receivers coming up a foot short on third downs.  If you felt the onset of deja vu and dread, it was completely justified.  They eventually settled down, and with a little help from an amazingly stupid personal foul penalty, scored a late touchdown to make it a three-point deficit at halftime. 

Offensively, the turning point was cashing in with a touchdown after the third-quarter safety.  After Michigan shanked the free kick*, Penn State received the ball at the 50 yard line.  Four plays later, the score was 26-17 and the rout was on.

Anyway, the grades.

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From Adam Rittenberg's Big Ten blog on ESPN.com:

"Everybody looked at the way that he carried himself, looked at the way he carried the scout team.  You can definitely see then that he was going to be a great quarterback when it was his turn, and he definitely waited it out. ... There definitely were a lot of days when Deon [Butler], Jordan [Norwood] and myself were like, 'Man, we can't wait for Daryll to come in.'"  -- Derrick Williams

When you have a team with so many weapons, one of the challenging things isn't necessarily being able to use them all, but threatening to.  For those reasons, I love this set:

The concept is simple: get all of the playmakers on the field.   However, the way it's set up is efficient enough to make me excited about pointing it out.  Just to break this down, let's point out what we are looking at:

• Under center, a 235 lb quarterback who can throw the ball
• Six yards back, one of two explosive backs, each one bringing a different style that makes it hard for defenses to sit on a particular pattern
• On the near side, one of two very sure handed receivers who have the speed to force the secondary to protect against the deep ball
  
• Just to the right of the QB, a FB ready for the blast or used to pick up blocking.  He is also available to clear out a lane created by what is probably the best offensive line in the Big Ten
• To the right of the FB, a playmaker who can move toward the center for the ball or go downfield into a passing pattern
• Oh, and don't forget about the TE

Now just to get this rolling, lets look at one of the more traditional options:

Now that obviously went for big yardage, but it doesn't have to in order to be effective.  You get the play opened up by leaving the TE on the line for a block and bringing in the FB to clear out a lane.  The LBs can't sit on the play because they have to worry about Williams sweeping around to the sideline, not to mention the possibility of a QB keeper.  The result?  Green needs only to get past the line of scrimmage and all of the sudden things are wide open.

Now that won't work with any kind of regularity unless you force the defense to play it honest, enter the second option:

You sell the run, which brings the LBs to the line of scrimmage, but then give the ball to Williams, already at full speed.  On the near side you've already brought the FB over to help Williams turn the corner, and as a bonus you have the WR blocking the corner and giving the ball carrier more room. 

Something that should be clearly pointed out here is that the coaching staff may have finally figured out a way to get Williams the ball without the terrible telegraphing we've grown oh so accustomed to over the past couple of years.  All the different threats on the field mean the former #1 overall recruit is getting a fair shot at a big play.  If he learns to run through traffic it is only a matter of time before he starts breaking a couple of these.

Moving on to a third option:

Ah yes, the pass.  What originally looks like a running set is, only moments after the play fake, a passing play with options all over the field.  You hope someone bites on the fake to Williams and then get the chance to look for the big play to Bulter (or Norwood) streaking across the middle or the TE who has by now released his block and gone straight north.  If those options aren't there?  You have Williams or the RB available for a quick dump off.  Also, The way this clears out the box, Clark can easily gain positive yards without even giving up the ball.

I'm going to stop here but it's only because I'm out of video; we've hardly covered all the different options of this set.  I never claimed to be and X's and O's guy, so I'll leave the finer details alone, but the bottom line is this thing is going to work.  They won't run it every play, or even every series, but four to eight times a game and you are looking at solid yardage with big play potential.  All of the best football players are on the field and all of them are a liability to the defense.

 
The offense rolls. Against Syracuse. As always, performance is relative to competition and the actors in The Express could have probably beaten the Orange this weekend.

Offensive Line

Well after the "oh, come on!" second play from scrimmage, in which Clark was quickly forced outside and proceeded to cough up the ball, the line looked same old. That one play was the only time Syracuse would get near the quarterback as both Clark and Devlin avoided being sacked for the rest of the afternoon. Each QB was given reps with the first team and the offensive line provided the protection that lead to the two passers throwing for over 130 yard each.

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In the wake of the 66 point barrage against Coastal Carolina there was talk about this team being the best offensive Penn State team since 1994. More talk on that later. Let's review their performance against Oregon State.

Quarterbacks

Daryll Clark has drawn a lot of comparisons to Michael Robinson ever since he rushed for 60 yards against Texas A&M in the Alamo Bowl. I must admit, if he had been wearing a #12 jersey on Saturday you could have convinced me the earth had passed through a rift in the space-time continuum and taken us back to 2005. Of course, if that had happened would we be aware we had gone back in time? Or we just think it was 2005? How sure are we this is 2008? Maybe it's 2010 and Pat Devlin is the starting quarterback and we don't know it.

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The hard part here is to remember the context, it was Coastal Carolina.  Penn State was charged with replacing a two year QB and 1300 yard rusher, it looks like they did a good job.

Offensive Line

The one thing people weren't worried much about was this unit.  They are starting four seniors and played like it.

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