Category: PAC-12

Penn State vs Utah prediction, game preview, odds, how to watch. Rose Bowl, Monday, January 2, 2023

Penn State vs Utah Rose Bowl Prediction Game Preview

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Penn State vs Utah How To Watch

Date: Monday, January 2, 2023
Game Time: 5:00 ET
Venue: Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA
How To Watch: ESPN
Record: Penn State (10-2), Utah (10-3)
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Penn State vs Utah Rose Bowl 5 Things To Know

Rose Bowl Prediction, What’s Going To Happen, History

– Utah keeps on rolling. This might not be quite the team the 2021 version was, but it matched last year’s ten-win campaign, it won another Pac-12 Championship, and it’s going to another Rose Bowl.

It’s Utah. You know what you’re getting.

Great lines, great coaching, a smart style with a great combination of toughness and confidence – that’s Utah, and now it all has to come together to make this the program’s best season in the 12 years as a member of the Pac-12.

– Penn State is more about what’s coning than what this is. Sure, we’ve heard it all before about how Penn State has the talent, the upside, and the excitement to be on the verge of national championship-level status, but yeah, James Franklin might have that in place for 2023.

It’s a young team with a whole lot of superstar power about to make this one of Franklin’s best teams yet … potentially. Next year.

As is, the Nittany Lions are fantastic. They went 10-2 with the only blips coming against Ohio State and Michigan, but no one would buy into the idea that they might have one of the four best teams in college football.

They’re missing a few parts – not having star CB Joey Porter around hurts – but for the most part they should be fine.

– Utah has done a whole lot of big things over the years to prove it’s a big-time program. Utah – not USC, not Oregon, not UCLA – has become the power program in the Pac-12 over the last few years, but it doesn’t have one of these – at least it doesn’t have one as a Power Five program.

The Sugar Bowl win over Alabama came at the end of the 2008 season when Utah was still a Mountain West program.

In the Pac-12 it has a few Las Vegas Bowls, and a Foster Farms, and a Heart of Dallas, but the program that was 14-1 in bowl games from 1999 to 2017 is 0-for-its-last-3 in three big bowls including last year’s Rose Bowl.

Like Penn State, there are a few players missing, but not enough to be catastrophic. Tight end Dalton Kincaid is the one who matters.

– Penn State clunked in last year’s Outback Bowl loss to Arkansas, but it’s been okay under Franklin going 3-3 so far with wins in the Cotton and Fiesta, and a Rose Bowl loss to USC in an epic battle to end the 2016 season.

– GOOD LUCK hoping for this year’s Rose Bowl to be anywhere near as good as last year’s Ohio State 48-45 win over Utah. We won’t count the 2020 playoff game – that wasn’t played in Pasadena – so really, the last five true Rose Bowls have been amazing.

Last year’s was great, the Oregon 28-27 win over Wisconsin to kick off the 202 year was outstanding, the Ohio State 28-23 win over Washington was fun, and the 2018 54-48 Georgia double overtime win over Oklahoma ranks among the best bowl games ever – and certainly deserves to be in the team photo of best College Football Playoff games. Before that was the Penn State-USC thriller.

And we all deserved those games after what Christian McCaffrey and Stanford did to Iowa in the 2016 Rose.

CFN Experts Picks: Jan 2 Bowls

Why Penn State Will Win The Rose Bowl

The run defense should hold up.

This isn’t the USC defensive front the Utes are going against.

There was the outlier against Michigan, but that was it for bad moments for the Penn State defensive front. It allowed over 400 rushing yards to the Wolverines, held Minnesota to 165 in a blowout win, and stuffed Auburn allowing 119 rushing yards in a 41-12 road blasting.

No one else ran for more than 100 on this D, and now it’s rested. More than that, Michigan is the only team to average more than four yards per carry against the Nittany Lion defensive front.

Utah’s offensive line is phenomenal, and it’s great at keeping defenses out of the backfield, but now it’s dealing with the Big Ten’s best pass rush and the best D at generating tackles for loss.

On the flip side, Penn State got out of its running game in the two losses. It’s 9-0 when running for more than 111 yards, but …

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Why Utah Will Win The Rose Bowl

The Utah defensive front is rested, too.

It got hammered on by Florida to start the season, and it couldn’t deal with UCLA. Those were two of the two losses, and there was a problem in the first meeting with USC. The Gators, Bruins, and Trojans, though, had quarterbacks who could take off. That’s not really Sean Clifford – he can run a little bit, but not really.

Everyone else had major problems running on the Ute defensive front the tallied fewer than 100 rushing yards seven times.

However, the real problem for the Nittany Lions might be control. As good as the running game is, and as terrific as the offense has been, it’s miserable on third downs.

In general they’re good at controlling the ball and the clock, but that’s going to be impossible to do against a Utah team that’s equal parts deliberate and explosive.

Few teams are able to dominate the clock like Utah can, with third down conversions coming at a 50% clip, and with the defense the best in the Pac-12 at coming up with third down stops.

Rose Bowl Prediction, What’s Going To Happen, History

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