Penn State is back to .500, and head coach Matt Campbell has his first win in Big Ten play. No matter how it happened, that’s how the Nittany Lions needed to end Saturday night at Beaver Stadium.
However, it wasn’t an ugly win that the team gutted out. Instead, the Nittany Lions, without their top two wide receivers, Koby Howard and Chase Sowell, who both missed the game with injuries, dictated the terms to Purdue in an emphatic 31-17 win.
Penn State outgained Purdue 417-175 and ran 76 plays to the Boilermakers 44. Campbell’s team had half as many first downs (22) as Purdue ran plays. While the scoreboard wasn’t as lopsided as those underlying metrics, it was exactly how Penn State is supposed to treat Purdue. And man, was it good to see.
Winners:
3. D’Anton Lynn
Penn State was excellent defensively, but there wasn’t one player who especially stood out. The defensive backfield was impactful, with six pass breakups and two interceptions, and even with just one sack, the defensive line was the most disruptive it's been in Big Ten play. Yvan Kemajou and Armstrong Nnodim were consistently in the backfield, and Lynn’s steady diet of stunts and twists allowed a group that lacks an elite penetrator to shoot gaps most of the night.
While his group definitely has limitations, Lynn hasn’t showered himself in glory this year. After the bye week, he managed to hold Purdue to a 32% success rate and 3.98 yards per play. Purdue QB Ryan Brown completed just 10 of his 29 attempts for 142 yards and a touchdown, with two interceptions.
2. Taylor Mouser
Penn State was averaging 75 rushing yards per game against Big Ten opponents this year. That was with a run game that didn’t know its identity, toggling between zone and gap scheme runs and a heavy rotation in the backfield. Coming out of the bye week, offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser stripped the run game down, relied heavily on physical, downhill gap scheme runs, and the Nittany Lions went for 269 yards on the ground, averaging 5.3 per carry with two runs over 40 yards, and finished with over 43 minutes time of possession.
Without his top two wide receivers, Mouser called a great game and took the pressure off his quarterback. It’s exactly what Penn State has needed, and will need, to fight back to bowl eligibility.
1. Cam Wallace
As smart as it was of Mouser to lean on the gap-scheme run game, and as well as the offensive line played, Wallace was the revelation of Week 9. He went for a career-high 135 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries, with a long of 48 yards.
Despite scary injuries early in his Penn State career, Wallace has real burst and physicality, and to make the gap-scheme identity work, he has a level of patience that James Peoples and Quinton Martin Jr. have not displayed. He has to press the double teams and wait for his linemen to work to the second level, and he did it consistently.
It was an excellent performance from a player who has reportedly been impressive in practice and is seemingly the new RB1.
Losers:
2. Special teams
Punter Nathan Tiyce completed a pass to Benjamin Brahmer on a fake field goal to extend the first drive of the game, a 96-yard march for a touchdown. However, other than that, Penn State’s special teams were a bit of a mess. Between a blocked punt and two missed field goals from Ryan Barker, Penn State finished with -10.16 special teams EPA.
1. Pat Kraft
The head coach he hired just got his first win in Big Ten play, so in some sense, it was a great day for Kraft. However, after Matt Cambpell’s 0-4 start in conference, tickets to Saturday’s game were selling for less than $10 leading up to kickoff, and while the announced attendance was over 100,000, that’s hard to believe from the images of Beaver Stadium.
Kraft has seemingly eroded trust with the fanbase, raising ticket prices after a costly stadium renovation and putting a substandard product on the field after a sloppy hiring process put Campbell behind the eight ball this offseason. That all seemed to culminate on Saturday with a frustrated fanbase.
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