Emotional Penn State offense knows it let the defense down at Ohio State; can it fix what ailed it?

Columbus, Ohio — Penn State first-year starting quarterback Drew Allar fought back tears while describing a performance he said “sucked” in Saturday’s 20-12 loss to Ohio State. Veteran tight end Theo Johnson said the Lions’ offense absolutely let the team’s defense down. The emotional pain was evident on the faces of every member of the program who talked to reporters after its seventh consecutive loss to the Buckeyes. But it was even more pronounced in the voices and faces of the players under the command of offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich.

There is no way to sugarcoat it. The Penn State offense was terrible. Allar was 18 of 42 for 191 yards and a touchdown in garbage time. He was sacked twice. The Lions rushed for just 49 yards (1.9 per carry) and allowed nine tackles for loss. There were missed throws, drops, missed assignments, puzzling play calls, and more. At least there were no turnovers.

On a day when the offense just needed to do something, anything, to find the end zone and hold up a tremendous defensive performance, it could not. And, that will stick with these players all night long.

“I mean, [they are a] very good team, but at the end of the day, we still lost,” Allar said. “So, there’s a lot of emotions in the locker room and for good reason. Nobody wants to feel this way. We put countless hours of hard work in and it sucks to have a result like this.

“Obviously, we didn’t do well as a offense today and struggled. But I truly believe that if we can fix the little things, we probably would have had a better performance to day. It was a great defense that we went against. But, I felt like we stopped ourselves a lot more than than we needed to. It was just silly things.”

No laughing matter

Penn State made numerous mistakes. Some may be silly, as Allar coined them. Others were systematic. The offense again failed to consistently create explosive plays. It was an astoundingly bad 1 of 16 on third down and didn’t get its only conversion until garbage time. There continues to be a frequent disconnect between Allar and the receivers that is hard to explain. The protection is further down the list of issues in this game than some will probably care to admit. But, it wasn’t great, either. And, Yurcich has plenty of explaining to do when it comes to play choices and personnel usage.

“Obviously, on third down, we’ve got to be better,” head coach James Franklin said. He called third down performance the biggest difference in the game.

“And we’ve done a pretty good job of that all year long. We did not do a good job of that today. They played some zero hold [coverage] on us. And we got to be willing to throw it over their heads in those situations and take some shots and be aggressive. But you gotta give them credit too.”

How can Penn State fix this moving forward?

Eight weeks into the college football season, Penn State is who it is on offense. It can suffocate bad foes and even adequate ones as it did against Iowa. But it does not play consistently at any position group. It lacks consistent difference-makers. And the five-star quarterback has too often not lived up to his lofty recruiting ranking so far.

Does that mean the Lions will go winless from here? Of course not. But when it comes to fixing the issues that plague this attack, there is only so much that can be done, and that’s a fact that must be recognized at this point. Penn State may be able to clean up some things before next week and for the rest of the season. But, the amount of work that needs done is significant. So, too, is the amount of improvement that is needed. Saturday’s loss showed that.

“It sucks to lose like this, especially on the road,” Allar said. “I mean, [they are a] very good team, but at the end of the day, we still lost. So, there’s a lot of emotions in the locker room and for good reason. Nobody wants to feel this way. We put countless hours of hard work in and it sucks to have a result like this. But we have to wash it and learn from it. Because if we don’t learn from it, we’re just fooling ourselves. We have to really be critical of this film and just really learn from it and not let this happen again.”