Penn State Football: the numbers behind the Nittany Lions’ 5-0 start

Areas for improvement

The third and final statistical area that I thought would define success this season was third down conversion rate. The Nittany Lions were about average last year (64th to be exact) in third down conversion rate, converting on 39.5% of third down attempts. Surprisingly, they’ve been even worse so far this season, as they are converting at just a 33.8% clip, tied for 105th nationally.

You would think that with a much-improved running game, they would have been more successful on third down, but that hasn’t been the case. They’ll need to drastically improve in that department and find ways to move the sticks in the second half of the season.

One way they can help themselves convert on third downs–or perhaps not even get to third down as often–is by improving their completion percentage. Despite the fact that Sean Clifford is completing a career-best 62% of passes and being that he is currently the program’s all-time leader in completion percentage, this is a number that needs to be a little higher.

It will be up to Mike Yurcich to put Clifford in a position to be successful, giving him a lot of high percentage throws and using the run to set up the play action pass.

Defensively, the Nittany Lions are allowing 341.6 yards per game, which is 45th nationally. That’s respectable and it’s above average, but this defense is capable of being so much better in that department.  The main reason for this is that they are surprisingly 105th in the country in passing yards allowed at 262 yards allowed per game.

The secondary is far better than that number suggests, and they’ll need to perform like it the rest of the way.

The final statistic on defense that is a bit shocking is tackles for loss. Penn State Football is tied for 75th in the country with just 27 tackles for loss so far this season. With stars like PJ Mustipher, Adisa Isaac, Chop Robinson, and Curtis Jacobs in the front seven, you would expect that number to be higher.

Creating negative plays was one of the main things Manny Diaz is known for as a defensive coordinator, but they haven’t done much of that so far. They’ll also need to take a step forward in that regard.

Overall, Penn State Football has the same 5-0 record as they did at this point a year ago, but the team is statistically far better than they were at that point, which should give the fanbase hope that the remaining seven games of this season will go much better than it did last season.