There were running a buy-one-get-one-free special on Penn State logos this week so I bought some extras. Actually, I wanted to start pointing out areas where one team had a huge advantage, so anywhere you see one team ranked in the top 25 and the other team is ranked below 80 you will see it emphasized with two logos.
Indiana couldn't come at a better time for Penn State. After two straight games of struggling on offense the Nittany Lions need a game like this to get their mojo back. Indiana is bad on offense and bad on defense. But the stat that bothers me is the number of sacks they record per game. They are a very good pass rushing team and Daryll Clark has not been good at handling pressure in the past two games. Penn State has to dominate the run on first and second down to get third and short situations and keep Indiana guessing. They also need to mix in play action on first and second down which I don't recall seeing much of in Iowa at all. Indiana's pass defense is terrible, which is understandable considering the injuries they have suffered.
Defensively this is a team we should handle easily. They don't have many weapons, and Tom Bradley won't be waking up in a cold sweat this week with visions of James Hardy leaping overtop our defensive backs. I don't see too much to get scared about here, but then I thought the same thing last week.