Inside the goal-line stand that helped Penn State football beat Pittsburgh

With a fist in the air and his mind blank, Garrett Taylor took off toward the Penn State student section — simply because that’s where he saw the most green grass.

Taylor acted on pure emotion, stemming from a goal-line stand and ensuing missed Pittsburgh field goal that helped Penn State hang onto a 17-10 win in the 100th and last rendition of the Keystone State rivalry for the foreseeable future.

“We knew it was a huge moment in the game,” Taylor said. “We knew we needed to step up, and everyone did their job.”

Perhaps some relief fueled Taylor’s celebration as well. On 4th-and-1 earlier in the drive, he’d lost Pittsburgh tight end Nakia Griffen-Stewart in coverage. The Panthers moved the chains with a 26-yard completion on that play, helping spur them to a 1st-and-goal situation from the 1-yard line.

On 1st down, Cam Brown pressured Panthers quarterback Kenny Pickett, forcing him to throw the ball away. Pickett ran for no gain on 2nd down, and Brown again pressured him into an incompletion on 3rd down.

Then, Pittsburgh coach Pat Narduzzi made the decision that defined the game. Instead of going for it on 4th down — trailing by seven with less than five minutes on the clock — he opted to kick a field goal.

Jan Johnson speculated Narduzzi would try an onside kick thereafter to try to take the lead. James Franklin thought Narduzzi simply had faith in his defense. Taylor thought he was influenced by Penn State’s stingy goal-line defense.

Narduzzi told reporters afterward he kicked “because you need two scores to win the football game.”

He didn’t get any, and Penn State walked away a winner. In the physical environment curated by this rivalry, the Nittany Lions owned the three feet of real estate between the ball and the goal line.

Simply put: they pushed harder.

“That’s pretty much what it is, you’ve got to out-physical everybody,” Brown said. “When you play football, your goal is to out-physical the man across from you on every play, and that’s what we did.”

Before the stop, the expectations were made clear. Penn State huddled up while the officials reviewed a catch by Pittsburgh’s Taysir Mack that set the Panthers up in the shadow of Penn State’s end zone.

Their minds dealing with a rush of adrenaline and focused on the task ahead, no one seems to remember who spoke up — Brown guessed it was Lamont Wade. But the message was vivid in Jan Johnson’s memory.

Penn State wouldn’t let Pittsburgh cross that goal line.

“‘We’re going to do everything we can to prevent a touchdown,’” Johnson remembers his teammates saying. “We got after the quarterback, made him uncomfortable, and got a big run stop there by [Taylor] and Jesse [Luketa]. So, overall, we accomplished our goal.”

The in-game consequences were obvious. The Nittany Lions forced Narduzzi into making a decision he’ll be second-guessed on for years, and Pittsburgh never seriously threatened the Penn State end zone again, chucking a prayer from about 30 yards out as time expired that fell harmlessly to the ground.

But in this game — in this rivalry — and after controlling the running game and the line of scrimmage for almost the whole 60 minutes, winning this way just felt right for the Nittany Lions.

“A win like that, it was gutsy,” Taylor said.

Perhaps gutsy isn’t what Penn State fans wanted to see on Saturday, with many perceiving the difference in talent to be wider than the difference left on the scoreboard when the cameras left and the fans filed out.

But it’s what they got — as much grit as you can fit into a space 1 yard long and 160 feet wide.