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STATE COLLEGE — KJ Hamler, after a tense few moments, finally sat up on the grass at Beaver Stadium.
Penn State’s dynamo had just taken a helmet-to-helmet shot on a rare handoff, one that saw him drive for 4 yards on third-and-3 to ice the Nittany Lions’ 28-21 win over Michigan.
Then came the crowd. The fourth-largest in Penn State history at 110,669 saw the sophomore receiver slowly rise. And the fans responded. Chanting “KJ” as he sprung to his feet and walked to the sideline one final time.
Six catches, 108 yards and two touchdowns, including the game-winner early in the fourth quarter. A 100-yard kick return score called back on penalties.
And the biggest run of his career. The Michigan native had shut the door on the Wolverines.
Shuttling around the formation before the snap, Hamler finally cut back toward quarterback Sean Clifford, who made the read to hand it off to Hamler rather than keep it himself against the Wolverines’ overloaded box.
Hamler was hit shy of the sticks. But the 5-foot-9, 176-pounder lowered the shoulder, took a shot to the head for good measure and spun down ahead of the line to gain.
“I was just thinking in my head all the people who told me I couldn’t do something,” said Hamler, speaking with a far more serious tone from his usual upbeat nature. “Because my dad always told me ‘can’t’ is not in my vocabulary. Not in a man’s vocabulary. So when someone says I can’t do something, I just want to prove them wrong.”
Including grinding for extra yardage against the toughest defense the Lions had seen to date.
“I take that to heart,” Hamler said. “Somebody says I can’t do something. I try to be different than everybody else. I don’t want to be your typical slot receiver who just takes jet sweeps, who takes little screen plays. I want to do it all. I want to do everything a 6-5 receiver does.”
On Saturday night he did it all and more to beat the Wolverines and lift the No. 7 Lions to a 7-0 start and 4-0 in Big Ten play.
Hamler had nearly pulled off a similar feat in last year’s White Out, burning Ohio State for a 93-yard touchdown to give Penn State an early cushion.
But he was injured in the second half and not available at the end as the offense ultimately sputtered and the defense blew a late 12-point lead. The loss unraveled Penn State’s season and led to a series of coaches and players leaving in the offseason.
The Lions were on the verge of a similar collapse on Saturday, watching a 21-0 lead in the second quarter whittled down to 21-14 early in the fourth.
Then Hamler and Clifford caught the Wolverines in a fatal mistake. The defense missed a signal and didn’t have a safety deep, allowing Clifford to loft a deep ball that Hamler ran underneath for a 53-yard strike that proved to be the game-winner.
“We didnt get the call (in),” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said. “We didn’t have the right defense. … It was more of (not) seeing the signal. We didn’t have a post safety.”
Michigan answered back again with a Shea Patterson quarterback sneak on fourth-and-goal to pull within 28-21, then forced a quick three-and-out to drive for the tying score from the Lions 45.
The No. 16 Wolverines (5-2, 2-2) converted one fourth down and then faced another from Penn State’s 3-yard line. Patterson stepped up to avoid the rush and had receiver Ronnie Bell in the middle of the end zone.
Before safety Lamont Wade could hit him from behind, the ball hit Bell in both hands.
Then it hit the ground.
“I thought he still had it after I punched it out, but when he got up I saw it was on the ground,” Wade said. “It was amazing.”
Bell was in tears on the sideline as Penn State, for the second straight week, managed to burn through a top-25 opponent’s timeouts and pick up one last first down to seal the win.
After back-to-back 100-yard games, freshman running back Noah Cain was curiously absent for much of the night — Lions coach James Franklin did not indicate any kind of disciplinary issues — but he picked up 7 yards on the first two plays of the final drive.
Cain had moved the sticks on third down to beat Iowa a week earlier. But against the more talented Wolverines, the Lions didn’t want to risk a third straight simple handoff.
“We just thought that instead of just handing the ball off with them overloading the box right there, we needed to go to one of our read plays where Sean has the opportunity to keep it or KJ can get it on the perimeter,” Frankin said. “We didn’t feel like we were going to just be able to line up with their overloaded box like that and just hand the ball off again.
“We would like to get the ball in (Hamler’s) hands as much as possible. I think 10-12 is a good number. A lot of different ways to do that and that’s on offense, that’s special teams, a lot of different ways. The one thing that probably surprised me the most tonight is him turning into a power back at the end of the game there. lowering the shoulder and hammering that thing in there. I didn’t expect that all 137 pounds of him, or whatever he is.”
A joke. But it’s the sort of thing Hamler has heard most of his life.
“A lot of people always told me I’m too small. I wouldn’t do this. I wouldn’t do that,” Hamler said. “Growing up in Pontiac, there’s not a lot of people that make it out. I really want to be different, change my family’s lives and just be an impact to the city of Pontiac.
“I wanted to do something big. And I think that I can. And I think that I will.”
He capped off an early Penn State blitz on a 25-yard touchdown that came after Tariq Castro-Fields expertly read a slip-screen call by the Wolverines and picked it off.
Clifford figured in on all four Penn State touchdowns, opening the scoring with a 17-yard strike to tight end Pat Freiermuth and then running one in himself from 2 yards out.
Michigan pulled within 21-7 at halftime and had Beaver Stadium grumbling and nervous in the third, getting a pair of 12-yard touchdown runs from Zach Charbonnet.
But Patterson’s touchdown on the sneak was the Wolverines’ final score.
All that was left was for Hamler to dust himself off and hear his name chanted.
“I really couldn’t believe it at that time,” Hamler said. ” I asked people, ‘Are they really chanting my name?’ I would never in a million years thought that would happen.”
“It’s really a blessing. And I’m glad that I could impact people’s lives, as a person, as a football player. … We all work so hard for these moments. Just doing that and just hearing that from the crowd was a blessing.”
