OT: Penn State's offense is causing panic (SI's Stewart Mandell)
Penn State's offense is causing panic
Joe Paterno tried to send a warning midway through spring practice when he said during a Big Ten coaches teleconference: "We have a very average offensive line." On the morning of the Nittany Lions' April 24 spring game, he conceded "we've got a long ways go" in determining a successor to departed quarterback Daryll Clark. Then the Lions took the field for the Blue and White game that afternoon and showed a nationally televised audience that for once, their coach is not exaggerating.
Neither sophomore Kevin Newsome (5-of-12, 50 yards) nor former walk-on Matt McGloin (10-of-23, 110 yards, two interceptions) did anything to distinguish themselves in the spring game. It didn't help that Penn State's revamped offensive line (All-Big Ten center Stefen Wisniewski has moved back to guard, one of several position shuffles) couldn't protect them. Of the quarterbacks, true freshman Paul Jones (5-of-8, 67 yards, two TDs) won the eyeball test hands down, and position coach Jay Paterno said the staff is open to playing him. But one can't help but think that his father would sooner stitch dragon flames on the Nittany Lions' jerseys than start a true freshman on the road at Alabama on Sept. 11.
Spring Football Roundup at Maize n Brew.
Enjoy.
PSU will be fine. They have some good RBs and an excellent defense. They'll just have to play top notch D and grind it out on the offense. Hmm, sounds just like old school Joe Pa football; none of this spread HD crap.
"PSU will be fine"
I seem to remember many saying this about Michigan in 2008. Look how that turned out. Yes, they are not making the drastic changes we made, but I think MGoShoe has it right that we can expect some struggling in Happy Valley. Any amount of struggling will make me feel good.
As long as we beat them I'm fine with their "struggles".
That Sread HD Crap has gotten awesome results for Penn State since it was installed (400+ ypg for 4 of the last 5 seasons). It doesn;t matter how good their runningbacks are if their o-line sucks. Add to that the concern, putting it mildly, over the QBs and there'll be a lot more grey hairs in happy valley next season.
Defense is definately more important but, they better have a top 10 defense this year if they're going to be fine. Check out what they lost in the draft on defense:
- 1st Rd, Jared Odrick, DT
- 2nd Rd, Sean Lee, LB
- 3rd Rd, Navorro Bowman, LB
- 7th Rd, Josh Hull, LB
Methinks they won't have a top 10 defense. They'd do very well to beat 8-4 this year.
...in response to WichitanWolverine and WolvinLA2 I placed the PSU fanbase on my schadenfreude watchlist.
This season has the potential for an inordinate amount of "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others", i.e., Penn Staters.
After the past two years of being the "Schadenfreude-ee," you'd think this fanbase would stop pointing the finger at others, given how it feels.
Heck, Penn State might have a year where they are considered to be "down," and they still might be 7-5 or 8-4. As a Michigan fan, that ought to stop any gloating you have over Penn State's "misfortune."
You are missing the point of schadenfreude. Your perspective seeks to get rid of the concept. When talking about schadenfreude it makes no sense to talk about not feeling good at another's misfortune (as it works in sports). That is an assumption of the conversation. Anything else is a conversation about something else.
mgoblog.com and Brian revel in the schadenfreude meme. He writes "This Week in Schadenfreude" for God's sake. The point is to have fun at the expense of fanbases who pitch a fit when their team doesn't live up to their always over-inflated expectations.
The Michigan fanbase is hardly exempt from being featured and lambasted. The point is to point out and lampoon irrationality, not to make fun of fanbases just because.
IME, the fanbase is ripe for a season long meltdown. It's a prediction. I may be wrong, I may be right, and I may be a lunatic. But...it's...just...an...interwebs...prediction.
jg2112 has a higher moral calling than you.
Also, he hugs his family (and you presumably don't).
I'm sorry. This is one of the admittedly few times I'm not being snarky. Maybe I'm too old, but I don't really see the point in doing it. Yeah, maybe I'd have a comment for a Penn State fan and we'd talk about their youth at QB, but after the conversations I've had to go through defending the Michigan football program for hours since Bo died, i just want to watch the games in peace and enjoy the product, instead of trying to heap grief on other fanbases or get joy out of their setbacks. I dunno. It flummoxes me.
...that's cool. But you're still not getting the concept. It's not "to heap grief on other fanbases or get joy out of their setbacks" but to make fun of the ones who do the wailing and gnashing of teeth routine and who establish joepaternomustretire.com and whatnot.
I'm all for civil conversations with like minded members of other fanbases and mutual lamentations over disappointing seasons. When you find a rationalmsufan or reasonablepsufan, you must cherish them and nuture that rational and reasonable behavior.
Gotcha. I've been not looking at it right. I'll just laugh and point from now on.
JG
The species msufanus rationalae has never been seen in the wild.
Good thing he had the umbrella to slow his fall.
And to keep him dry...
It looks like he went over one of those invisible gopher holes, hidden underneath the rain puddle. I hate when that happens.
i wish i knew some Penn State fans so that i could constantly refer to their QB as Pat McGroin.
I'm surprised that their line is struggling so much, since it looked really good in Big Ten play last year and they didn't lose much from it.
I think we're just looking at PSU falling back to the pack. Rather than winning 10 games, I think they'll win 7 or 8 this year. They've still got Evan Royster and Stephfon Green and they almost always have a solid defense.
Kevin Newsome and Shavodrick Beaver. Both of those quarterbacks were both projects and last year we would have been screwed with those 2 options.
This is why when he decommited and opened up a scholly for Tate i thought that even though Newsome might have more upside we needed a QB to play last year. I think that we got the best of possible worlds in the last class as far as QBs are concerned.
While I wouldn't trade our QBs for anything, I believe that RR would have developed Newsome better and more quickly than Penn State has.
He would have developed more similar to Denard. But we would have been TERRIBLY AWFULLY BAD that year if we had both Beaver and Newsome.
Throwing him in the mix because there was a brief time when he was rumored as a possible QB recruit. Did you predict that he would have the success that he did as a freshman starter?
It's impossible to say how Newsome, Beaver, or even Daniels would have done at Michigan. Tate might have been the most prepared to start a college football game but, in the end, we were still 5-7.
Did anybody ever figure out what the hell happened when we were recruiting Daniels? From what I remember, there was initially a lot of interest on both sides, then all of a sudden there was none.
The WOTS is that he wanted "compensation" and Rodriguez lost interest because of that.
GoBlueWolverine.com at that time (Scout's site) and the reports were that Daniels and/ or his H.S. coach had "their hand out" for some "perks" to get B.J. to come to Michigan.
This begs the question: Did USF pony up the dough to get Daniels to commit or was he willing to go to USF without compensation over UofM?
I think by that time he realized nobody was going to pay him and USF was the only school still willing to let him on campus.
While it's nice to hear that Penn State should move (maybe) from "daunting" to "winnable" when looking at the schedule this year, I can't say I'm enthused to hear all about the Big Ten's being hooooooorrible from Bama fans and The Networks should there be a whoopin' handed down.
Also, the notion of "very average" gives me a minor case of the giggles.
"We'll be in the middle"
"How in the middle?"
"VERY in the middle."
"Wow, that IS in the middle! You weren't joking!"
after their spring game, it certainly gave me some flashbacks to the QB play at Saline HS at our spring game in '08. Scary enough that blocked memories came rushing back...
Call me crazy.
I hope we beat the holy hell out of Newsome, assuming he plays against us. Either way, here's to Big Will laying out the QB a la Alan Branch.
I don't feel greatly disposed to schadenfreude myself when everything's peachy with my favorite teams/political parties/etc; it's when things seem to be going to shit that I most revel in it.
FWIW, this seems to be supported by scientific research, at least insofar as what I get from Wikipedia:
"Brain-scanning studies show that schadenfreude is correlated with envy. Strong feelings of envy activated physical pain nodes in the brain's dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; the brain's reward centers , such as the ventral striatum, were activated by news that the people envied had suffered misfortune. The magnitude of the brain's schadenfreude response could even be predicted from the strength of the previous envy response.[23][24]
A 2009 study indicates that the hormone-like chemical called oxytocin may be involved in the feeling of schadenfreude.[25] In that study, it was reported that when participants in a game of chance were pitted against a player they considered arrogant, inhaling oxytocin through the nose enhanced their feelings of schadenfreude when their opponent lost as well as their feelings of envy when their opponent won."
FWIW I'm watching the game right now and it's pretty sloppy. Their defense is obviously solid and they have some nice talent at RB and some size at wideout but their O-Line and QB play looks pretty awful.