Home // Sports // Sports Columnists // Paul Sokoloski

Pryor finally starting to make his true mark Paul Sokoloski Opinion

Sunday November 08, 2009 | 12:00 AM

Paul Sokoloski psokoloski@timesleader.com

Now it makes sense why Terrelle Pryor was such a coveted football recruit coming out of Jeannette High School in 2008.

Now it’s obvious why Big Ten coaches respect him so much, they named him the conference’s preseason player of the year.

Now it’s clear why Penn State wanted him so badly.

Before Saturday, it wasn’t.

Because Pryor spent most of his first two seasons looking like the most over-hyped and overrated quarterback in college football.

He looked lost as Ohio State’s leader too much of the time. He lost that game against Penn State as a freshman last year when he fumbled away the game, and along with it, any national championship hopes the Buckeyes still had. He lost a lot of his national luster with mediocre numbers and sloppy, subpar play.

He wasn’t the Superman everyone at Ohio State predicted he’d be.

And even in the biggest victory of his young career Saturday, a 24-7 pounding of Penn State at Beaver Stadium, Pryor’s statistics didn’t turn out that great.

But he did.

He made a beautiful seven-yard touchdown scramble on a bad ankle after first swiveling away from a sure sack by Navorro Bowman to give the Buckeyes an early lead. Pryor helped put them ahead again, after Penn State answered with a touchdown of its own, with a head-turning 24-yard quarterback draw that set up a second quarter field goal.

Pryor’s day was far from pretty, but his head never hung.

Instead, he hung a loss on Penn State.

"This was my first time to lead the team down the field and score touchdowns against a good team," Pryor said.

A couple of times out there, Pryor seemed more likely to lead the Buckeyes down the drain.

He missed everyone on the field with his first pass, which sailed toward the stands. He badly overthrew wide open receiver Ray Small, which should have been a 54-yard touchdown and a 17-7 Ohio State lead seconds before halftime.

But Pryor shrugged off those misfires. And he kept firing until Penn State went down.

Pryor found DeVier Posey running down the other sideline for a 62-yard touchdown bomb, finally giving Ohio State that 17-7 lead and staggering the Nittany Lions late in the third quarter. Then he polished off Penn State with a six-yard touchdown throw to his third option, running back Brandon Saine, early in the fourth quarter.

"I don’t know what his numbers were," Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said, "but he made some good, big throws and made some good decisions not to throw. You don’t turn it over and have a defense like ours and you’re going to rush for 200 (yards), you’re going to win most games."

Pryor won this game.

"It’s exciting," Pryor said.

His numbers don’t suggest that.

He finished with eight completions in 17 attempts, for just 125 yards.

But Pryor didn’t throw an interception, didn’t take a sack, didn’t fumble away the game this time. Instead, he secured it for Ohio State by making the biggest plays at the most critical times against Penn State.

That’s what the great ones do. They take a gameplan, execute it, and in the process, make it pay huge dividends by making plays in the clutch.

"Nothing against Penn State," Pryor said, "it was just business coming back here."

The fans in the Beaver Stadium stands certainly gave him the business, from the time he first stepped foot in the place.

"They messed around with me pretty good," said Pryor, who led Jeannette to the 2007 PIAA Class 2A championship. "They were on me, man. Sometimes I wished I had head phones on. You can’t let it get to you. I had a lot of poise."

Penn State fans must have figured Pryor had a lot of gumption, after their home-state boy became one of the nation’s biggest recruits and spurned the Nittany Lions for Ohio State on national signing day in 2008. It didn’t help that Pryor acted like the location of Happy Valley was beneath him while defending his college choice.

For a long time, it seemed like Ohio State had some explaining to do for handing Pryor the keys to its offense.

He had a so-so freshman season last year. And Pryor hadn’t been sparkling as a sophomore, completing just over half of his passes for 1,543 yards and 13 touchdowns against nine interceptions as the Buckeyes stumbled out of the national title hunt and into Beaver Stadium with a 7-2 overall record.

"He’s going to get better and better every day," Tressel said. "He was poised. He was patient. He’s very competitive. I’ve never waivered thinking of his progress."

Now we know why.