Penn State Postgame Report: Mauling In Morgantown Sets Tone For Nittany Lions

The college football season didn’t start with Penn State, but the biggest day of the young season did when College GameDay travelled to Morgantown to broadcast from the Penn State-West Virginia game.

The Nittany Lions pulled away in the the second half last year when these teams met in Happy Valley, but the trash talk from fans had been on for almost a month and even many of the “experts” on TV were picking West Virginia to utilize their hostile atmosphere to ruin Penn State’s season early.

matt leinart and urban meyer, hello pic.twitter.com/YtuAwKhfJ4

— The Smoking Musket (@smokingmusket) August 31, 2024

Of course, that’s not what happened. The game started out slow for the offense, which was certainly not what fans wanted to see after the last few seasons. This was highlighted by a lost fumble when the ball was snapped in response to a defensive player clapping.

The defense came out looking strong, however, and carried that throughout the game. 

Two sacks, two fumble recoveries, an interception and just 85 rushing yards against a top-ranked run offense are what fans could have expected from last year’s defense and it’s nice to see that continue under new DC Tom Allen.

The second half is where Penn State came alive. With that fumble behind them, the offense engineered 84, 71 and 73-yard touchdown drives in the second quarter alone.

The first drive was capped off with a 50-yard pass to Harrison Wallace, the second drive was a 10-play drive with the touchdown coming via a pass to running back Kaytron Allen and the final drive just before the half (just 32 seconds on the clock when they got the offense out there) saw a 55-yard bomb to Omari Evans and then an 18-yard touchdown pass to Wallace that was an all-around impressive throw and catch.

At the half, Penn State was forced to sit for over 2 hours (139 minutes) due to a weather delay.

No matter to them as the offense came out and it was Nicholas Singleton who blew by the Mountaineers on a 40-yard touchdown run.

By that point, with almost 25 minutes still left in the game, Penn State resorted to vanilla plays that wouldn’t show too much for other opponents and were intended to just keep from turning the ball over and run some clock. By the fourth quarter, the backups were in the game and ultimately scored their own touchdown.

Overall, the defense looked nice (even better than the score would indicate) and the offense showed explosiveness and effectiveness in just about every area that fans could have hoped.

Offensive MVP: Drew Allar

Allar is perhaps the biggest riser in this match. Was it his best game ever? That may be up for debate. He did look very impressive, however, and in what essentially amounted to one half of football running their true offense he amassed 216 yards on 11 reception with three touchdowns. Not only that, but he added 44 yards on six runs and looked to be comfortable with contact and seemed to have an edge and willingness to fight through that contact that he hadn’t shown much in his last season at Penn State. It’s about as much as you could have hoped to see from Allar in a game where they were blowing their opponents out pretty early.

Defensive MVP: Jaylen Reed

He didn’t lead the team in tackles, but he was close with nine (three solo). Reed also managed to record two pass breakups in the match while also getting a tackle for loss. Just about the only things he didn’t get in this game were a sack and an interception. Still, he seemed to be the captain of the secondary and effectively managed the other DBs telling them where to go and how to handle motions multiple times throughout the game. Reed seems poised to take over that key role that Jaquan Brisker and Ji’Ayir Brown held for the team in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

Game Notes

• Andy Kotelnicki’s offense certainly seems to be the real deal. It looked much more consistent, effective and creative than any Penn State offense over the past five or so years.
• Bad officiating all around in this game. Both sides lost some calls and there’s sure to be arguments over who got it worse based on some ticky-tack calls one way or another, but in particular the review team who is watching video of these plays was atrocious – so bad in fact that no one who was even associated with reviews for this game should be fired immediately and not allowed around any sports ever again, even down to children’s sports. They were that embarrassing. 
• As mentioned above, refs on the field missing a call is one thing, but reviews showing video evidence that is willfully ignored is unacceptable. The box score shows West Virginia scored 12 points. Watch the game tape and you’ll see that at least three of those were gifted to them. The Mountaineers only got their second field goat because they converted on a 4th and 1 run. Well, somehow the refs determined it was a first-down conversion even though the runner didn’t even make it back to the line of scrimmage. See for yourself below.

First down West Virginia I guess?? pic.twitter.com/UT94XMiQ76

— Barstool Big12 (@BarstoolBig12) August 31, 2024

• On the lone West Virginia touchdown, in the fourth quarter, the ball never made it to the end zone. The runner’s helmet broke the plane, but that appeared to be it. Another “reviewed” play that was botched by people watching film. Now, that was third-down and the game was already out of reach so the impact was far less important, but it’s important to point it out to support just how bad the entire officiating crew was all game long (against both teams, but West Virginia didn’t have a review team botch calls against them).
• Receiver was looked at as a huge problem this offseason. Penn State brought in Julian Fleming to help with that, but they didn’t need him to step up in this game. Harrison Wallace III stepped into the role we had hoped he could take last season if he were healthy and put up a massive 117 yards and two touchdowns on five receptions. They weren’t all just speed, either – they were nice catches. It seems the Nittany Lions may have a home-grown answer for their predicted problems.
• The secondary got torched in last year’s bowl game with all the opt outs, but the transfers and internal growth seem to have solidified that group once again.
• Singleton had a touchdown and 114 yards on 13 carries. It was a poor game on the ground for Kaytron Allen, though, who recorded just 20 yards on 10 rushes. Each recorded a reception for over 10 yards in the contest.
• Hopefully it will come with more time, but it’d be nice to see bigger sack numbers, particularly with them coming so late in the game when the outcome was already decided.
• Tony Rojas looks like the real deal at linebacker. Abdul Carter seems to have some way to go yet to be as effective at DE as we know he can be, but Rojas has stepped right into the linebacker role and is showing why they want both of those guys on the field.
• It certainly seems like the win is already paying off on the recruiting trail as PSU was able to flip one of their top targets from nearby Virginia Tech this Labor Day weekend.

Penn State Nittany Lions @ West Virginia Mountaineers – August 31, 2024