Penn State has completed the first half of the regular season and finds itself sitting in a great spot on its quest to compete in this year expanded College Football Playoff. The Nittany Lions sit at no. 3 in the major polls during their bye week as they prepare for a road game at Wisconsin and a home game against Ohio State in the next couple of weeks.
With Penn State sitting on a bye week, we decided to get together as a staff and share some of our options on the Nittany Lions before the second half gets started. To start off, we each shared a quick assessment of Penn State midway through the season.
Shayne: Penn State is sitting at 6-0 like many projected they would, but it hasn’t been without a few hiccups. The close game against Bowling Green and this past week’s overtime thriller against USC were games that they need to win more comfortably. Still, the offense is much improved and the defense has too much talent not to figure things out. I give them a solid B for their first half.
Charlie: Penn State’s first-half performance came as somewhat of a surprise for me. Did I expect them to lose any of its first six games? No, but I didn’t expect Andy Kotelnicki’s to have this offense in a position to come back from games this quickly. The performance against USC proved that this unit is the real deal. The explosiveness and creativity is off the charts from what I expected. The slow starts are concerning, but I think Penn State will figure it out when it really needs to start fast.
The Nittany Lions haven’t hit their stride yet defensively and I thought for sure the defense would be ahead of the offense halfway through the season. The defense has the pieces to be a top 3 unit, but the run defense is lagging behind. Still, they only give up 14.5 points per game so it hasn’t came back to bite them yet. I think by the season end we will be talking about the defense as an improved unit from where it is heading into Week 8.
Brad: It’s hard not to be impressed by what Penn State has accomplished during the first half of the season. Despite a revisionist history about some of the games they played, the Nittany Lions have been challenged. Prior to their matchup against West Virginia, there were a lot of analysts predicting Penn State would lose. That did not happen and they won in decisive fashion. Against Illinois, some people thought the Nittany Lions would crumble, something that did not happen. And against USC, traveling three time zones and getting down early that has snowballed in a bad way for them in the past in the past, they came back and won on the road.There are still things that Penn State hast to improve, but sitting 6-0 at this stage of the season with an improved offense is something that feels different.
Kevin: It is hard not to be satisfied with the Nittany Lions sitting at the midway point without a loss when I predicted they would lose at USC (I was seemingly the only one picking the Trojans, for the record), so of course I am thrilled seeing the position Penn State has played itself into. I thought at the beginning of the season Penn State was going to go 10-2 in the regular season, with a real shot at 11-1 and I see little reason to back off that idea. In fact, I am leaning much closer to 11-1 right now than 10-2 with some big challenges coming up after the week.
The offense has improved has taken some noticeable strides with the explosiveness coming through ina. big way and Tyler Warren showing off his pure dominance at tight end. I still want to see a little more consistency out of the other receivers but they have all contributed to the early success in spots. The running game has been improved as well so it has been refreshing to see Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen thriving more than they did a year ago. The defense has gotten the job done about as well as I had hoped too. So yeah, the first half has been pretty darn good.
Check out more of our midseason roundtable discussions:
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