On Saturday, November 12th, Penn State took on Maryland at home beating Maryland 30-0, which would be considered the easiest shutout of the season.
Twice the 4th down magic only in the first quarter. What?!?!
In the first quarter, Penn State had two drives on offense that were both 4th down conversions that had converted to two touchdown drives which caused the score at the end of the first quarter to 14-0 Penn State. When I saw this happen, I thought, well, Penn State is decent enough to convert on two fourth-down drives, but Maryland’s defense is garbage, so they weren’t going to put up much of a fight.
One touchdown, multiple field goals, and too much punting.
In the second quarter of the game, there was only one touchdown for Penn State, which Nick Singleton scored with 7:46 left in the second quarter, and then came the boringness of only field goals from both teams. Hence, both special teams units for Penn State and Maryland got more time in than both offenses combined. But at the end of the 1st half, it was 24-0 Penn State.
Third Quarter bumps in the road
Penn State drove down the field in the third quarter to score a touchdown. Still, because of a unsportsman conduct call that was made on Coach Franklin, the head coach of Penn State, they had received a penalty and thus had to kick a field goal which consequently caused the sore for Penn State to be up on Maryland 30-0 still a shutout. Still, after the third quarter, the Nittany Lions decided to bench senior quarterback Sean Clifford for freshman quarterback Drew Aller.
The Freshman steps in
In the fourth quarter, Penn State decided to bench their starting quarterback, senior Sean Clifford, for freshman quarterback Drew Aller; this has been happening lately when Penn State is up in the fourth quarter, and the true freshman did his job except fumbling the ball with 6:36 in the fourth which then again Maryland could have driven down the field to score but was stopped by Penn State’s defense which causes a turnover on downs for Maryland and gave Penn State time for one last drive and chewed the clock down to win the game 30-0.
Takeaways from this game
After watching this game, the takeaways I took from this game were that the Penn State offense needs to fix many things, such as the tendency to throw down the field less since they had more opportunities to score, which could have caused this game to be more of a blowout. Even though Sean Clifford did his job somewhat correctly and broke the school record for passing yards, he should have been benched by the third quarter cause everyone knows in Happy Valley that its time to move on from Clifford since he has been at Penn State for very long time and isn’t the best for the higher level of football which is the NFL which is why he stayed at Penn State for so long, but I could go into that in another blog post but case in point they should have benched him by the third quarter for Drew Aller to see what he could have done since he is the future for the Nittany Lions. The defense did their job well by not letting Maryland score, even though there were some penalties. Still, they did an excellent job at not letting them score, but more importantly, coach Franklin, do your job next time of not allowing an unsportman-like conduct penalty to happen again since it was your only one in 12 years. But on the other hand, Maryland has to get their act together since their defense was garbage letting Penn State convert on fourth down for a touchdown not once but twice, as well as getting their offense together to put up more points since they play Ohio State next weekend and will get destroyed worse than they did by Penn State. While Penn State will be fine playing Rutgers and most likely win that game easily since they have been beating all easy teams except the ones that put up a fair fight, such as Ohio State and Michigan. Still, I could also go into that with another blog post, but moreover, Penn State got another victory, making them 8-2 and hopefully winning their last two games of the season; see next week, fans. We Are, Penn State!
Little Miss Football 