What to make of Penn State Football’s 2020 Schedule
Penn State Football’s 2020 schedule features a tough first half and perhaps a winnable second half of the season. Can Franklin, Clifford & Co. compete for a Big Ten Title?
Penn State Football’s 2020 schedule was announced and it’s certainly stacked against them over the first half of the year. Sure, the Nittany Lions get home games against Kent State, San Jose State and Northwestern but they also have to travel to Virginia Tech and Michigan over the course of the first five weeks.
Week 1: vs Kent State
Week 2: @ Virginia Tech
Week 3: vs San Jose State
Week 4: vs Northwestern
Week 5: @ Michigan
Week 7: vs Iowa
The Hokies and Wolverines should ultimately be the litmus test as to whether the expectedly new run-heavy offense from new offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca can eat clock and grind up the yards against extremely talented defenses. Ciarrocca joins the Penn State Football staff as head coach James Franklin’s offensive coordinator after spending the last three seasons at Minnesota under the same position.
While he may bring with him a run-heavy offense, he led rising junior QB Tanner Morgan to one of the better seasons for a quarterback this year and saw great success against Penn State’s defense in their marquee matchup in Week 11 last year. Ciarrocca now leads the offense with one of the better young trios at running back across the country with Journey Brown, Noah Cain and Devyn Ford all expected to have big roles in the offense.
Still, Ciarrocca will have to navigate through the Hokies defense that ranked 27th in rushing yards allowed per game and a Wolverines defense that ranked 23rd in the same category. Iowa has to replace a ton of talent across their team but even with question marks at quarterback, should still present a very difficult defense. Even those ‘cupcake’ Group of 5 teams present a problem as San Jose State gave Minnesota a scare just a few months ago and Kent State QB Dustin Crum has recently been ranked as high as the 11th-best quarterback in the country by PFF.
So that brings us to the second half of the schedule. A second half of the schedule with a bigger challenge but perhaps fewer challenges altogether.
Week 8: vs Ohio State
Week 9: @ Indiana
Week 10: @ Nebraska
Week 11: vs Michigan State
Week 12: vs Maryland
Week 13: @ Rutgers
The Ohio State ‘bugaboo’ rears it’s ugly head in a midseason clash when the Buckeyes come to Happy Valley. At the very least, home-field advantage should give Penn State at least a few points in this game’s spread but they’ll have to shake last year’s performance off to compete against Justin Fields and Co. from Columbus.
After Ohio State, though, and perhaps an underrated Indiana team, the final stretch of the season looks like it should be at the very least five consecutive wins to close out 2020 for Penn State Football. ESPN’s FPI gives Penn State a 6.5% chance of winning out, a 13.1% chance of winning the Big Ten and their projected win-loss record sits at 10.7-1.5 for the Nittany Lions.
The experts have weighed in — how many games do you think Penn State will win with that schedule in 2020?