To say Penn State’s season opener at Purdue was a roller coaster of emotion would be an understatement. A game with seven lead changes and decided in the final minute is a heck of a way to start a new college football season. Penn State came out on top in a tilt-a-whirl 35-31 victory on Thursday night to get an early jump on the Week 1 schedule.
Now comes the fun part: evaluating the performance.
Let’s go through the postgame report card to evaluate Penn State’s season debut for the 2022 season.
Quarterback
Grade: B-plus
On a night when your starting quarterback turns in four passing touchdowns, runs for one and leads the drive of the game in the clutch, it is incredibly difficult to be too harsh with an evaluation. Was it a great game by Sean Clifford? Not at all. Clifford passed for 282 yards and four touchdowns, including a 67-yard pass to tight end Brenton Strange at the end of the first half to inflate the stats a bit. He completed 20 of 37 pass attempts. He also had a bad overthrow of Mitchell Tinsley in the fourth quarter that was picked off and returned for a touchdown that gave Purdue the lead in the fourth.
But you get credit for the toughness and guts in this situation. We can’t quite deliver an “A” here, but it’s darn close under the conditions.
Drew Allar played one series in place of Clifford in the third quarter. He completed two of his four pass attempts for 26 yards and showed off a solid arm. But he was clearly a freshman on the road in a tough spot. His time will come.