STATE COLLEGE — So, you’ve turned to this page to read about poor coaching.
It’s a tradition for Penn State fans to do this following games now, after all.
They want answers for play calls that didn’t quite work, and that’s understandable. They want to know when offensive coordinator John Donovan will be fired, and if it will be done so in the public manner they feel he deserves. They want someone to say that as positive as he stays and as well as he and his staff recruit top talent, James Franklin is never going to be able to outsmart the top sharks in the Big Ten, guys like Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh.
You won’t find that here, today.
Because the inconvenient truth is the Nittany Lions didn’t lose Saturday because they got outcoached. They lost because, in areas where the players
should be getting better, they’re still making critical mistakes.
Namely, you can’t blame the coaches more than the special teams units. Unless you assume the coaching staff teaches some of the crippling problems we’ve been seeing as the season has progressed.
“There are some issues, no doubt about it,” Franklin said. “It’s everything. It’s kicking. It’s kicking location. It’s location. We’re just very, very inconsistent in those areas right now.”
On Nov. 7 against Northwestern, you might remember Solomon Vault returned a kickoff 96 yards for a touchdown shortly after the Nittany Lions churned out a nine-play, 78-yard scoring drive just to get both within a touchdown of the lead and something positive heading into halftime.
Think about what that means to a team.
Penn State struggled all day, finally found some success, and less than half a minute later, it’s right back where it started. The Nittany Lions statistically outplayed Northwestern the rest of that game. While that play didn’t win the game for the Wildcats, they sure couldn’t have won without it.
On Saturday, there was more than just one critical error.
The first came with Penn State trailing, 14-10, in the third quarter. The defense forced a Michigan punt and was starting to assert itself. This was a team desperately trying not to fall behind two scores, the way its offense was struggling, and it was succeeding.
Punter Blake O’Neill’s high, arching kick came down into the waiting arms of Penn State punt returner DeAndre Thompkins, who called for a fair catch. It was an easy play. Make the catch and get the offense onto the field.
Only, Thompkins didn’t make the catch. Ball went through his arms, and Michigan’s Jehu Chesson had to do nothing more than fall on top of it.
Michigan had the ball at the Penn State 9, and three plays later, the Wolverines had that two-score lead.
“The momentum plays are the hardest things you have to go through,” linebacker Jason Cabinda said. “When you drop a punt ... at that point, we have them backed up, and we think we’re going to get the ball, that we’re going to go down and tie this thing up. Then, that happens. It’s big momentum. When you’re playing against a team like Michigan, it just can’t happen. You can’t play like that and expect to win.”
Things happen, of course. Mistakes happen. You move on from them, and Penn State was almost able to this time. The Nittany Lions put together the next two scoring drives, getting field goals out of back-to-back opportunities inside the Michigan 10 on their first two drives of the fourth quarter. Not ideal results, for sure. But the first got the Lions within eight, and the second made it 21-16, which meant if they could cash in just once with a touchdown, they had the lead.
But guess what happened after that second Tyler Davis field goal?
Joey Julius’ kickoff arched high, but short. The ever-dangerous Michigan return man, Jourdan Lewis, caught it and broke at least six tackles as he darted up the Michigan sideline. By the time someone in blue and white ran him down, he was at the Lions’ 40.
That’s just too easy for Michigan to come up with enough yards to get some points from there.
“It probably takes out a lot for our defense, giving them a short field and making it tough on them,” tight end Brent Wilkerson said. “All three phases have to play well for us to win a game like that. We didn’t do it.”
Penn State’s offense is not an explosive one. It can’t consistently overcome points being handed to the opposition by the special teams.
Penn State’s defense, as tough as it can be, can’t erase every mistake.
It’s easy to want to blame the coaches or quarterback Christian Hackenberg or an offensive line that hasn’t been good — by a long shot — for long stretches the last two seasons. But at least you can explain away why the play-calling is often conservative (can’t run or pass block) or the quarterback isn’t putting up big numbers (no time to throw) or the line struggles (just not much experienced talent or depth).
What can’t be explained is why the young players who comprise the special teams units aren’t getting better, why they continue to make the same mistakes. Thompkins is a freshman, sure. But he’s been returning punts all season. He’s hardly an inexperienced rookie anymore. It’s also late in the season for kickers to continue struggling with their location and for the coverage teams to not adjust to what they know is a possibility.
“You want to get down there and you want to blow stuff up. That’s really the mindset of kickoffs,” Cabinda said. “I think we have to make sure of kick location. Kick location, if the kick is high but short, now guys don’t know which way to go because of how the ball hung in the air. Guys are trying to two-gap things and maybe not stick to the fundamentals that we’re teaching. It’s a lot of things like that.”
It’s a lot of things that, right now, are holding this program back.
Point the finger at coaches and quarterbacks, because that’s easy. Think about it this way, though: If Penn State’s special teams coverage units played OK — just, you know, OK — the last two games, they might be playing Michigan State next week for a chance for 10 wins. But they couldn’t even manage to be just OK in either game.
They played miserably. And until that changes, miserable is exactly how Penn State fans are going to feel on Sundays.
Collins covers Penn State for Times-Shamrock. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com and follow him on Twitter @psubst