STATE COLLEGE
Win or lose, Penn State was going to learn something about itself Saturday night.
That much was clear long before Central Florida took the field and earned the biggest win in its program's history.
In this case, though, maybe what everyone learned about the Nittany Lions should be considered surprising.
Because if you were told Monday that the Nittany Lions offense would score 31 points, the offensive line would play its best game of the season and on top of it all, their true freshman quarterback wouldn't turn the ball over even once, wouldn't you have thought the Nittany Lions had the game in the bag?
Well, of course, they didn't. As well as Christian Hackenberg and Zach Zwinak and the rest of the offense played, they were playing catch-up for most of the picturesque fall-like Saturday night in Happy Valley in a 34-31 loss.
Everyone wondered how playing Syracuse and Eastern Michigan helped bolster the offense's reputation, and the answer is, it didn't.
But the defense is a different story. It was considered to be Penn State's rock coming into this game. By some, the defense gave the Nittany Lions their only real shot to win.
But junior quarterback Blake Bortles torched them for 288 yards and three touchdowns on an ultra-efficient 20-of-27 throwing. And the running game, led by the bruising and speedy and ever-appropriately named Storm Johnson, piled up 219 yards on 38 carries.
The Nittany Lions didn't get a pass rush.
The Nittany Lions didn't make nearly enough plays in the secondary.
And worst of all for Penn State fans, the Nittany Lions tackled like a pee-wee team.
Remember the last time the Nittany Lions' defense allowed more than 34 points at home? It's when Boston College visited and scored 35.
Twenty-one years ago.
"They did a good job. We didn't tackle very well. They blocked us. They made some plays," the ever-diplomatic coach Bill O'Brien said. "You have to give them a lot of credit. They had a good plan."
O'Brien said what coaches say when they lose a tough one. That he had to watch the film. That he'd know more in a couple of days about what exactly went wrong.
Judging by the amount of Nittany Lions tacklers guys like Johnson and receivers J.J. Worton ran through or around for extra yard after extra yard, the questions that came before that film session are fair.
Are the Nittany Lions physical enough to take on a rugged team like Central Florida? Because there will be others more rugged.
If they aren't now, are the Nittany Lions ever going to be able to get to that stage? Because as everyone knows, there are some built-in reasons not to be.
They call them "thud" practices at Penn State, and until Saturday, most everyone thought they were a brilliant idea.
Defenders hit ball carriers in practice. They try to get the necessary leverage to drive them backward. But they never actually take them to the ground. The first tackle a Penn State defensive player makes all week is actually the first one they make in a game on Saturday.
Why is it this way? Well, the scholarship limitations brought on by the NCAA's sanctions are the motivating factor. With 20 less scholarship players, Penn State simply doesn't have enough players to conduct the same type of practice it has traditionally.
"We have to work on tackling and keep trying to get better," safety Ryan Keiser said. "We have to work harder. We have to fight harder every day. We just have to tackle better."
But that, obviously, brings up a legitimate question: Can you become a better tackler without actually tackling?
"I mean," Keiser shrugged, "we've got to tackle. We can't be scared, and I don't think we are at all."
Most players asked about whether the thud practices are having a negative effect on Penn State's tackling in games - let's face it, the wins in the first two games masked some evident tackling issues - dismissed it as hogwash. In fact, when a reporter broached the subject with linebacker and Valley View grad Nyeem Wartman, he responded with a fast "No" and an icy stare.
Defensive coordinator John Butler doesn't exactly think it's an unfair topic for debate, though.
He knew what fans and the press were going to think. Penn State doesn't tackle in practices, so obviously, Penn State won't tackle well on Saturdays. It's a simple correlation. Maybe too simple.
With Penn State's game kicking off at 6 p.m., Butler said he had an opportunity to watch several college football games around the nation, and he said one thing stood out to him: How poor tackling is around the nation.
Surely, thud practices aren't the problem everywhere.
"I think it's fair (to question), but that's also a decision we have to make," Butler said. "When you have 62 scholarship players, you have to do your best to get what you have to the field. You can't take it down to 57 because you tackled in practice. And maybe, two of those five are your best players."
All of that is understandable. It really is, and no team would want to be in Penn State's position on a daily basis in practice. The coaching staff does a remarkable job getting this team ready to not only play, but compete, every week. They've been right there in every game since those sanctions were handed down, and that's a pretty remarkable feat.
But they quite simply aren't going to win as many as they can win if what happened Saturday is a harbinger of things to come.
Butler stopped short of saying the Nittany Lions didn't play a physical game, which is also certainly open for debate. In fairness though, a team that misses a slew of tackles - and Penn State missed more than a dozen by some counts - is by nature not going to appear physical.
Tackling is mostly strength and leverage, and the former is something the Nittany Lions undoubtedly possess. The leverage part, Butler added, is a constant focus during practices.
"The thing about it is, we work on tackling all day, every day," Butler said. "We work on the spacing of it - an inside leverage player, an outside leverage player, a fit-up player. The only thing we don't do is take him to the ground. I think it's fair to have a concern about it, but we're drilling it all the time. Maybe we just need to do it at a faster speed."
They need to do something. Because on Saturday night, Penn State made Central Florida's very good offense look like Oregon's great one. They couldn't stop it. Not when it mattered.
The offense came in with the questions, and it answered them with straight A's. The Nittany Lions will be able to score points, in bunches, and give this team a chance to be pretty good.
Too bad the defense went down with, pardon the expression, a thud.
(Collins covers Penn State for The Sunday Times. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com and follow him on Twitter @psubst.)