Linebacker Cody Simon (0) and the Ohio State defense came up with a goal-line stand in the fourth quarter to hold on for the Buckeyes’ eighth straight win over Penn State on Saturday at Beaver Stadium.
Barry Reeger | AP photo
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Penn State cornerback Zion Tracy (7) got a record crowd of 111,030 fans fired up in the first quarter with a pick-six against Ohio State. It was the Nittany Lions’ only touchdown of the game in a 20-13 loss.
Barry Reeger | AP photo
Penn State quarterback Drew Allar (15) started the game with a brace on his left leg, but he shed it in the second quarter and didn’t seem limited in his mobility.
Barry Reeger | AP photo
STATE COLLEGE — Will Howard threw a pick-six. He answered with touchdown passes on the next two drives.
Davis Igbinosun gave up a critical pass to Harrison Wallace in the final seconds of the first half. He answered by stealing the ball away from Wallace in the end zone on the very next play.
For all of the talk of Ohio State’s vulnerability after a so-so October, it didn’t carry over into Happy Valley on Saturday.
The No. 4 Buckeyes were the better team physically and mentally, dispatching the No. 3 Nittany Lions for the eighth straight season with a 20-13 victory in front of the largest crowd in Beaver Stadium history.
Those 111,030 fans came ready for a party, ready for the unbeaten Lions to finally break through against the Buckeyes. And they had the aging stadium positively creaking in the first quarter when Zion Tracy jumped a Howard pass for a 31-yard interception return for a touchdown.
That gave the Lions an early 10-0 lead. They managed just three points the rest of the way, suffering their first loss of the season.
Some of those same fans hung around to voice their displeasure after the game with boos and the occasional bit of trash thrown onto the field.
“I understand their frustration,” said coach James Franklin, who was the target of much of it after he fell to 1-10 against the Buckeyes. “Guys in the locker room are just as frustrated, if not more.”
Most galling for the Lions and their fans — twice they had first-and-goal from the Ohio State 3. Both times they came away with zero points.
Igbinosun came up with the interception before halftime. Then, down by seven late in the fourth quarter, the Lions called three straight runs for Kaytron Allen, which only got the ball to the 1.
A fourth-down pass into coverage intended for Khalil Dinkins fell incomplete. Star tight end Tyler Warren, who set up the first-and-goal with a 31-yard catch and a 33-yard run out of the wildcat, did not touch the ball with the game on the line.
“Should we probably have given the ball to Tyler Warren after the plays he made? Yeah, I get the question,” Franklin said.
Quarterback Drew Allar said he was looking for Warren as his first read on the fourth-down pass.
“We wanted to get it to Ty Warren, but the safety or nickel did a good job of playing over the top and driving it,” Allar said of the Lions’ final offensive snap of the game. “It would have been a bang-bang play short of the goal line or incomplete. Then I was looking at (Dinkins) and we just didn’t connect on it.”
Looking demoralized by the red goal line face plant, the Lions couldn’t stop the Buckeyes from running out the final 5:13 of the clock after the turnover on downs.
Franklin saw something similar.
“We did not handle, I think, the fact that the offense did not score in that situation well,” Franklin said.
The solace for Penn State (7-1, 4-1 Big Ten) this time around is that the odds of reaching the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff remain high.
The Lions will likely be favored in their final four games against Washington, Purdue, Minnesota and Maryland, who entered the week with a combined record of 14-17. And if the Lions win out, an 11-1 record would almost certainly earn them a home game in the first round of the playoff for some Christmas-time football in Happy Valley.
But Saturday’s performance will linger over the offense in particular should the Lions reach the playoff for the first time and face elite competition.
Franklin fired offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich last November after the offense came up well short in losses to the Buckeyes and eventual national champion Michigan. He brought in Andy Kotelnicki from Kansas to try and generate more explosive plays.
In the biggest test of the year, the new scheme failed to find the end zone, scoring just six points. Penn State managed a late touchdown a year ago in Columbus in a 20-12 loss.
Unable to beat Ohio State conventionally up front — Michigan’s formula for three straight wins over the Bucks — Kotelnicki had to try a little bit of everything. But the Buckeyes defense — led by coordinator Jim Knowles and former long-time Lions assistant Larry Johnson — stayed disciplined against exotic formations and frequent pre-snap motions.
Five different players took snaps from center on the day — quarterbacks Allar and Beau Pribula, Warren and running backs Allen and Nick Singleton.
On one play in the third quarter, Singleton got the snap, handed off to Allar, who faked a pitch for a potential reverse and looked deep.
The Buckeyes didn’t bite. Allar was forced to keep it for a short gain on the ground.
For his part, Allar didn’t look significantly hampered by the left leg injury that kept him out of the second half last week at Wisconsin. He opened the game wearing a brace on that knee but ended up shedding it late in the first half as it was forcing him to dive headfirst on runs rather than safely sliding.
That Allar was in that position so often was a problem. The Ohio native was forced to tuck and run on several occasions because there was no one open downfield. Penn State’s first five completions went to Singleton and the Lions’ wideouts combined for just three catches for 49 yards.
The Lions’ leading rushers on the day were Warren (47 yards) and Allar (31). Far from a winning formula as Allen and Singleton combined for just 18 rushes and 42 yards, a meager 2.3 per carry.
Things were smoother for the Buckeyes’ offense, which ended up with former Oregon, UCLA and Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly to run the show.
Despite Howard’s huge mistake to open the game, Kelly got him to settle down and he hit a pair of first-half touchdowns to Emeka Egbuka (25 yards) and Brandon Inniss (21 yards).
That’s all the scoring Ohio State (7-1, 4-1) would need, adding two Jayden Fielding field goals to match a pair of kicks by Penn State’s Ryan Barker.
The Lions’ defense had plenty of highlights in holding the Bucks to a season-low 20 points. Aside from Tracy’s touchdown, safety Zakee Wheatley came up with a massive play at his own goal line, punching the ball away from Howard for a fumble and a touchback that robbed Ohio State of a touchdown that would have made it 21-10.
Abdul Carter had two sacks and the secondary held freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith to just four catches for 55 yards. Another potential Ohio State fumble in the fourth quarter was ultimately ruled an incomplete pass.
On the negative side, the Lions lost Egbuka and Inniss on their touchdowns and the second score was made possible by Penn State gifting two first downs by penalty on third down. Carter jumped offside the first time and cornerback Elliot Washington was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct after what would have been a stop.
“Can’t do that. Can’t do those things,” Franklin said. “Happened last week, happened again this week. That’s on me. We gotta be a disciplined football team. We were not disciplined at times today.”
Franklin had to exercise some discipline himself after the game. In a video taken by StateCollege.com, Franklin confronted a heckler who had walked down to the front of a nearly empty student section as Franklin was heading into the tunnel after the game.
“If you’re gonna be man enough to talk, what’s your name?” Franklin asked the fan, who responded by waving him off and walking away.
“I get it,” Franklin said later at his postgame press conference. “We had an unbelievable crowd here. We had unbelievable support. You don’t get that without passion. There’s great things that come from that and there’s hard things that come from that.
“That’s part of the job. And I own it all. I own it all.”