You completely swallowed up Penn State’s running game, and defended the downfield pass exceedingly well.

If your glass is half empty, your wide receivers have a terribly contagious case of the drops.

But I almost feel as if they have to put it together next week and beat Northwestern, which I think is doable.

….You’re prowling for street meat right about now…..

I liked the effort (again) this week. I am positive things are turning in the right direction

Again, only a couple miscues away from being 21-14 or 21-17 in the 4th.

Again, at least we didn’t look as futile and lose by as much as OSU will tonight. At home, on national TV, in front of 100k+, while ranked in the top ten and their whole league’s reputation riding the outcome….again.

We were competitive on the road against a top 5 team. ’Nuff said.
Bring the rest of the schedule on.

28-7 against the #5 team in the country ain’t terrible for this team at this time. Our defense looks good. Sure our secondary could be better, but they had another interception today (a nice one at that) and they were dealing with a pretty fast and athletic group of playmakers. As mentioned, Carter and Bailey still look good. And if there had been any passing threat they would have probably done a good deal more damage today. Paulus was definitely having trouble today. Penn State’s speed on D might have freaked him out, but our O-line didn’t do him any favors that’s for sure. Next week is looking more winnable than I would have guessed though. Northwestern struggled with Easter Mich., who lost to Army last week, so it seems Paulus should have more time to establish his game without running for his life. I’m not ready to bench Paulus just yet. This was a tough game to take, especially in his position (and I don’t think Nassib would have done better had he played the whole time). I don’t think any judgements should be made until after next week. It would be unfair to bury after this game against this defense (and with the often times questionable playcalling today). His receivers need to help him out too. The drops worry me and I don’t know how that can be fixed, but I sure hope it can.

The good news: I don’t think any team on our schedule will be as talented as Penn State, or as fast overall, so that’s nice at least.

While we all hope for 5-6 wins, we know that we have no depth at a lot of positions and are starting essentially a freshman QB. Against the number 5 team in the nation, covering the spread is respectable.

That we are all pretty realistic about the state of things, and are able to generally see the glass half full. I hope the rest of the fan base largely feels the same way, and the Dome is packed and loud this weekend for Northwestern.

my glass is definitely half full. Being at the game it seemed like it was closer than the score indicated. The defense had a strong game again. They really stopped the run and the goal line stand was awesome. I also loved how the d was able to keep the intensity throughout the whole game even when the offense was letting them down time and time again. Paulus seemed to settle in a bit as the game progressed to its latter portions and he stayed in to take a few hits while throwing a couple good balls.

As stated earlier we were a couple plays away from it being 21-14 or 28-17. The drops were killer. Alec Lemon has seemed to struggle to catch anything but a bubble screen. That being said I feel that now we are at the point where its a play here or a play there that is costing us the game where as last year we were never even in position to win a game. I’m still confident this team will find between 4 and 6 wins this year and will only improve from here.

My good friend is a PSU fan and after watching the game he told me he though we had a shot at 7-5 or 8-4. I told him I would shit myself if we somehow managed that. Anyway, the Penn State fans seem really pleased with the win and it seems they agreed that it was a tighter game than the scoreline would indicate.

Something else of note: Our defense has 5 turnovers in two games. That’s not too shabby at all and if Marrone can figure out just how he wants this offense to operate, those turnovers could start turning into points.