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Looking Ahead: Tall task awaits Penn State at Ohio State

Even after Penn State lost to Iowa two weeks ago, all of its goals, including the Big Ten championship and College Football Playoff, were still attainable heading into the second half of the regular season.

But not anymore.

After their agonizing nine-overtime loss to visiting Illinois on Saturday, the Nittany Lions now head into the final five games without a realistic path to the Big Ten Championship Game at 2-2 in conference play and with no path whatsoever to the playoff at 5-2 overall. Which means that the team will have to find a way to both address its on-field problems and recalibrate its hopes and expectations.

Penn State is getting set to travel to Ohio State next week, so the need for some sort of reset could not be more urgent. But coach James Franklin said after the 18-16 loss to the Illini that he resisted the urge to start making fixes immediately.

Penn State Nittany Lion football program suffered a major loss to Illinois Saturday.
QB Sean Clifford played injured Saturday, and it was clear early on as the offense struggled to move the ball.
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“Probably the hardest part of my job is after a tough loss to stand there in that locker room and give them what they need to hear in that moment,” he said. “My natural inclination is to start coaching and going over the issues we had today on the field. It’s not the right time for it. We’ll save that till Sunday. It’s not how I’m wired. The hardest part of my job is standing up there in front of the team, the coaches, the trainers, the players, and addressing those things after a tough loss.”

In their loss to Illinois, injured senior defensive tackle PJ Mustipher was certainly missed; after allowing an average of only 111.3 rushing yards per game against their first six opponents, the Lions surrendered 357 to the Illini.

And while senior quarterback Sean Clifford played, he was clearly in pain, with his injury against Iowa two weeks ago seeming to affect his ability to throw with accuracy and also his willingness to run the ball. Franklin said the staff “had to be smart” about how Clifford was deployed. “That’s why we tried to mix the run and the pass, to take some of that off of him. Obviously, [rushing] is a big part of his game that he didn’t have today.”

But the Nittany Lions’ problems on Saturday went well beyond the health issues that have been piling up in recent weeks. The inability to gain yards on the ground, for instance, has been a season-long shortcoming that resurfaced against the Illini, with PSU managing only 62 yards on 29 carries (2.1 yards per carry).

And making matters worse, the Lions’ regression on both sides of the ball is occurring just as they hit the most difficult portion of their schedule. In the last five weeks of the regular season, they will face the fifth-ranked Buckeyes, sixth-ranked Michigan and ninth-ranked Michigan State, a gauntlet that begins next Saturday in Columbus.

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After an early-season lull that included a home loss to Oregon and an underwhelming victory over Tulsa, Ohio State has been surging. The Buckeyes headed into their visit to Indiana on Saturday night ranked first in the Big Ten in scoring offense at 48.5 points per game. And while they were an unimpressive ninth in the league in scoring defense at 20.5 points per game, they held three consecutive opponents – Akron, Rutgers and Maryland – to 17 points or fewer heading into their trip to Bloomington.

Quarterback C.J. Stroud went into the Indiana game with a 66.2 percent completion rate, an 18-3 touchdown-interception ratio and a Big Ten-leading pass-efficiency rating of 191.2. In addition, wideouts Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave were both among the top four receivers in the conference, and running back TreVeyon Henderson was fifth in the league in rushing, averaging 102.0 yards per game.

Whether the Lions will be healthy enough to regroup and score the kind of points they will likely need to keep pace with the Buckeyes is an open question. Since Clifford was injured at Iowa, they’ve managed just 21 points in six-plus quarters and nine overtime periods. The veteran quarterback didn’t look anywhere near full strength against the Illini, and Franklin alluded to numerous other injuries that affected the team’s ability to practice the past two weeks.

But college football at the Power Five level is a results-oriented business, and Franklin acknowledged that reality in the aftermath of the Illinois game.

“Obviously, we did not have our guys ready to play,” he said. “Obviously, there was a difference [after] playing Iowa on the road and having that type of loss with the injuries that we had going into our bye week. But at the end of the day, all that matters is that we get the job done, and we did not today. I did not today.”

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