The Lions' Pride

The key play in that series was the 3rd down playcall. PSU had a variety of options open to them, with QB sneak being at the very bottom of that list.

we could have gone with another FB dive. We could have gone with a PA boot. We could have faked the FB dive, and went with a pitch. Or we could have done what we did, but the problem is McGloin NEVER....I repeat, NEVER lets the blocking develop on any sneak he does. The second he got the ball he immediately went to his right, and without watching looked like he tried to put his back into the pile and drive it...but he didn't give either the C or the G a chance to get any kind of push.

McGloin does a lot of things in a sub-par nature, but his QB sneaks are horrendous.

We had the guts to do it against Iowa. I don't know why one of those 4 plays wasn't PA on Saturday.

hoping to finish up the review this morning and get the column written later today.

I have NO issues going for it on 4th there. Scrap figured that was the nail in the coffin and forces OSU to abandon the run game.

that 3rd down call though. Wow.

If we had kicked a FG, we would've been up 9 points. That would've been enough to force MIller to beat us with his arm.

A two-possession game is a two-possession game, especially in the 4th Quarter.

The goal line stand happened with ~5 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter I thought.

We kick a FG, they still have roughly 20 minutes to get a TD, and a FG, which is far easier to get than 2 TD's.

if it were the 4th quarter, you absolutely are right, kick the FG.

It was in the third quarter, no wrong way to go on that play, no problem with them going for it, no problem if they decided to kick it. To answer the OP's question, Pannell was pulling, just wasn't able to get anywhere because of the interior surge by OSU. Not uncommon to see an OL pull on quick hitting power plays for short yardage, PSU does it plenty.

Great minds think alike.

Especially with Zordich lead blocking.

Anyone see Zordich's block on the Redd TD against Illinois? That TD was almost entirely because of him.

And Zordich isn't a good runner. He's just a bigger back, that's it. And Penn State had success running the ball with their halfbacks all game. Just put Redd or Green or Beachum in and lead with Zordich and call it a day. Or, they could have gotten tricky and faked the fullback dive either time and pitched it to the halfback, who OSU completely ignored both times. There really was no excuse for not scoring there.

Some other observations, that gem may hit on, that really stood out to me.

Now i understand what gavin has been talking about with Hill. Though Still gets most of the credit, both on these boards and nationally... Hill was just a monster all game that never stops... one particular play, I believe when he forced the fumble... he destroyed #74 for OSU... #74 was pretty obviously the weak link on their OL.
I tried to pay attention to Carson a bit more, because he seems like a guy that at full speed just doesnt stand out, or make the spectacular plays that we see from Hodges or even Stupar... but I though Carson played well. But there was one play, second half, where Shugarts sealed off a hole by blocking Carson, it was almost comical... it literally looked like Shugarts had glue on his jersey, and Carson was stuck to him just flailing to get off and there was nothing he could do to get away from him until the play was over...
The other play that really caught my attention, was a play by Fortt in the second half... it was a running play, and Fortt got caught up inside initially and was blocked to the ground... the play got downfield a few yards and Sukay was tailing the runner, Fortt came full speed from about 15 yds away, after getting up off the ground to track the runner down and laid a real smack on the ball carrier too... I had to rewind it 2-3 times, because I was sure Fortt got knocked to the ground initially and it seemed impossible he made up that much ground, besides Sukay there must have been 4-5 other white shirts between Fortt and the ball carrier and he beat them all to the kid, and laid the wood... Excited to see more of him in the future.

My bad - for some reason I had 4th quarter in my brain.

As it was, our defense was still asked to win the game for the next 20 minutes. That won't cut it against Wisky.

Going for it on 4th and 1 on the goalline isnt going all out?