Penn State football: Sean Clifford details second-half struggles vs. Purdue
Penn State football quarterback Sean Clifford discussed the team’s second-half struggles against Purdue after Saturday’s game.
The Penn State football program hosted the Purdue Boilermakers on Saturday for their homecoming matchup. Coming off of a hot victory on the road against Maryland, Penn State was looking to go 5-0 on the season with a win over Purdue.
As expected, the win was an easy snag. Considering the long list of injuries for the Boilermakers, the strength of the matchup was surely a lot easier for the Nittany Lions. Even if Purdue did happen to be at full strength though, Penn State should’ve still been able to win by a comfortable margin.
By the time the fourth quarter wrapped up, Penn State won 35-7. That’s not a final score you could typically complain about, but there are definitely some things that the Nittany Lions know they have to clean up in the future if they want to remain unbeaten.
In the first quarter, it seemed like the Lions were going to roll over their opponent once again. With 21 points right off the bat, Penn State’s starting offense looked like they were ready to clock out early for the second week in a row. However, there was a turning point in the game.
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Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford underthrew his wideout, KJ Hamler, on a deep ball, which resulted in Clifford’s second interception of the season. Since that moment, Penn State struggled to move the ball on offense. And in the second half, they looked sluggish as they only managed to score seven points in the final two quarters.
Clifford is happy with the first-half results, but obviously slightly frustrated with the outcome of the second half. After the game, the Penn State quarterback attempted to detail the offense’s frustrations as he was asked about what might’ve gone wrong.
Clifford details the offensive struggles
“We kind of stalled out,” Clifford said on Saturday. “Not because we weren’t executing, but we weren’t finishing. That’s on me — that’s on everybody honestly. Just overall, we gotta’ clean some things up and have a better mentality coming out in the second half. We stalled out in the third quarter, and that’s unacceptable.”
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Clifford was happy with the first-half results, as everybody was in the building and watching were as well. But seeing the team go from scoring 28 points in the first half to only snagging seven in the second half surely won’t cut it against a better team who has solid coaching and decent weapons to form a comeback in that situation. The Penn State program knows that and will undoubtedly look to clean that up before next week.