Northwestern favored by 3
- Thread starter ohiolion95
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I think that is fair. NW has two quality wins this year and although PSU is looking much better lately, we have some ugly wins. I think we pull out the win outright, so I'd gladly take the 3 points as well.
I wouldn't have thought this after the Temple loss, but if Penn State can pull off a big win at Northwestern and go into the bye week at 8-2, this season has a significantly different complexion than I would have thought possible. Maybe go 1-1 against UM and MSU, finish 9-3 and get a pretty good bowl game....rake in the recruits in the process.
However, losing at Northwestern and then dropping both UM and MSU games, and it's a so-so 7-5 season with a middlin' bowl game.
So it looks like the Northwestern game has become quite pivotal.
However, losing at Northwestern and then dropping both UM and MSU games, and it's a so-so 7-5 season with a middlin' bowl game.
So it looks like the Northwestern game has become quite pivotal.
I don't gamble but I think it's a hard game to handicap. Penn State is playing much better than they were earlier in the season, but NW has beaten some stronger opponents. Having the bye week and playing at home probably factor heavily into the line, but this game could go either way. Road wins are always tough to come by in the BIG but I like our chances. PSU 21 NW 13
IF PSU gets one more win it will be a good season under the circumstances. The junior and senior classes are the sanction era recruits. The reality is the talent level took a huge hit during the sanctions. Many of the really talented kids in the freshman and RS freshman classes have yet to see the field.
my thoughts exactly! They have to be getting better at containing a running quarterback, right?
He is nowhere near the level of Perry Hills or Barrett. Not even close.
Just can't see the Lions losing to Northwestern. They are nowhere near as good as the pollsters had them earlier in the season. Now coming back to earth. They could end with a real thud.
It is the Fitz factor and I give the guy credit. He is an excellent game day coach against PSU. Have seen it many times. We will win regardless, this time, however.
NW has beaten Stanford and Duke. Stanford has 1 loss and Duke should only have 1. We have beaten no one with a pulse. I am not knocking our record but I think we could easily lose this game. If we win I'm all in for possibly winning 1, or both of the last 2. Should be interesting.
My take FWIW.
- Fitzgerald is a very effective "summer Coach" in that he gets his team ready to play out of the gate
- NW was ready, confident and at home vs. Stanford.
- The win at Duke was very impressive. Duke is a good, complete team
- As the season progresses, NW often gets worn down, more so than bigger, more physical teams.
- Their true Freshman QB was healthy and confident early in the season, but as he's faced more and better competition, he's regressing. Iowa threw a bunch of different looks at him and the results show.
- Game is at NW and PSU never gets off to a good start there.
- I think both defenses are good, so I'll call it a draw.
- I think our offense is a bit more talented, but it really comes down to play calling and making adjustments for what NW is doing on defense. This is the area that has me most concerned.
- Officiating? PSU is clearly the sexier Bowl team. Is there an orchestrated outcome that gets us to 8 wins in a close game? I'm assuming that the Zebras will ensure wins by scUM and MSU when they face us.
I went to the NW -- Duke game. My quick take on NW from that:
very well coached -- make few mistakes
defense is solid -- tackle very well; didn't get a ton of sacks, but pressured the QB
QB not a great passer; pretty good runner when he gets going; workhorse RB is good, not Barkley-esque
special teams are very good; they had a KO return for TD that day
don't stand out in terms of overall athleticism and team speed
I'd say PSU by 10, esp. if they continue to get excellent play from QB Hack.
How was their secondary, especially on deep balls or did Duke not throw many of those?
Northwestern also has 2 losses. If you take a look at their stats - they have one of the worst offenses in the b1g and the only thing that was productive in that offense in their OOC schedule when they recorded the wins you, and many others reference, is the Rushing Game. Specifically, in their 4 OOC games NW averaged 265 Rushin YPG and 411 YPG in Total Offense. IOW, they averaged 146 Passing YPG in their OOC schedule. The 265 YPG Rushing would have put them at the top of the b1g statistics for OOC games. The 411 YPG in Total Offense would have been middle of the road for OOC games and the 146 Passing YPG would have been near the bottom in b1g statistics for OOC games. NW went 4-0 in their non-conference schedule. NW has gone 2-2 in b1g play, so what happened that led to those two losses and a mediocre 2-2 conference play record?
The answer is easy, the only productive thing NW had in their Offense, their running game went from averaging 265 YPG Rushing in their 4 OOC games to averaging 107 YPG in their 4 b1g games to date. As a result, their Total Offensive Yards went from averaging 411 YPG in their 4 OOC games to averaging 253 YPG in their 4 b1g conference games to date. Their non-impact passing game was coincidentally enough 146 YPG in both their 4 OOC games and 4 b1g conference games to date. And their PPG went from a very average 25 PPG in their 4 OOC games to an abysmal 16.8 PPG in their 4 b1g conference games to date.
To simplify, their highly productive running game which averaged 265 YPG in their 4 OOC games was completely shut down by much better run defenses of the b1g teams averaging only 107 YPG in their 4 b1g conference games to date. Their scoring per game went down by 33% (from 25 PPG in 4 OOC games to 16.8 PPG in 4 IN-CONF games).
NW's offense is completely over-matched by PSU's Defense and PSU has the advantage on both sides of the ball (NW is giving up 163 YPG Rushing through 4 b1g conference games - how do you suppose SB will do if NW lays back and attempts to play "hat-on-hat" run-pass balanced basic defensive sets?). NW has no choice but to bring everybody up and not let PSU get SB and their rushing game established - they've got to load the box and blitz, "run blitz" as their basic defensive set. I don't think they have the defensive secondary to pull this off - especially if Gesicki has rounded the corner and is coming to life.
We'll see, but if PSU starts out well in this game like they did yesterday, I think they could potentially blow NW out. I know one thing, given how dreadful NW's offense is, they are not going to blowout PSU -- their only hope is to try to win a defensive-oriented, low-scoring game (IOW, come out firing with a blitz-happy, box loaded defensive scheme. If it works, I think they have a shot. If PSU blows it up early and gets out front, it could be blowout city.).
Because of their trimester (?) system, Northwestern doesn't have classes for the first few weeks of the season. Having only football to concentrate on early in the season has to be an advantage for those early games.
None I believe (though I think OSU is on trimesters as well though not as late) and this is as you said a great point that I was about to bring up if I didn't read it first. It's the reason they ALWAYS start out fast and have a slump in Oct/Nov a lot of times. Becuase of the timing of their school calendar they always have the first month free to concentrate on only football.
To follow on what FRTR posted. I checked about the Cats "running" QB. Through 8 games only averaging 8 carries per game.Take out his 1 long run of 68 yards and he is only averaging 3.6 per carry. Assuming he has some sacks included that isn't bad but not overwhelming. Also only averaging 139 yds passing per game so not much there.
My bigger fear is Fitz' ability to bottle up our offense.
I think 21 points wins the game. The best news is after the last two weeks no one should be able to gameplan for us to only throw or only run. If Donovan can call a game that gets Say say a couple decent runs early and Hack a couple of completions early I think we should be able to keep them off balance enough to score some points.
We aren't UM or Iowa just yet but they posted 38 and 40 against the Cats.
My bigger fear is Fitz' ability to bottle up our offense.
I think 21 points wins the game. The best news is after the last two weeks no one should be able to gameplan for us to only throw or only run. If Donovan can call a game that gets Say say a couple decent runs early and Hack a couple of completions early I think we should be able to keep them off balance enough to score some points.
We aren't UM or Iowa just yet but they posted 38 and 40 against the Cats.
Both Glen Mason and DeNardo picked Illinois over PSU. DeNardo spoke glowingly about how good Illinois front 7 on defense was.
Some of these wins may seem easy in retrospect, but Penn State has been under-rated by many of the talking heads for several weeks. There aren't many teams nationally that have a combination of talent equal to Hackenberg, Barkley, and a deep group of WRs. These pieces don't always seem to fit together, but it's first-rate talent and the team continues to improve.
Is it likely to go 3-0 down the stretch? Probably not, but not likely to go 0-3 either IMO.
The NW secondary was not tested much when I saw them. They got some pressure on the Duke QB and he quickly went to dump offs to running backs, rather than searching downfield. The Duke running backs did not get beyond the initial defender often after catching passes, but I can see a guy like Barkley getting the ball in the flat with room to maneuver, leading to some big chunks of yardage.
I hope you're correct but PSU is 1-2 on the road this year with the only win being a 1 pt squeaker against a reeling Maryland team. PSU's 4 conference wins came against teams that are a combined 2-15 in the league. I agree that PSU has better skill players and I like the matchup. I know what to expect from Barkley but I don't know what to expect from Hackenberg. PSU has a great chance if he plays like he did on Saturday. It helped that we had better field position (ILL punter isn't very good either) and Donovan was willing to throw over the middle. I think PSU will win but I don't expect a blowout.
Tale of two seasons:
NW won their first five impressively, including Stanford and Duke.
But the last three games have been bad: Lost to UM 38-0, lost to Iowa 38-10 and barely beat Nebraska 30-28, a team coming off a 55-45 loss to Purdue. The NW O is not very good and seems to be getting worse.
Meanwhile the PSU O has been apparently improving.
PSU has more raw talent - the NW recruiting profile is consistently in the bottom 5 of the conference.
But likely to be close because NW is well-coached and doesn't make a lot of mistakes.
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The 3 pt line looks about right. PSU and NW appear fairly evenly matched on paper, perhaps slight edge for PSU. At NW gives the 3 pt edge. Franklin has lost to Fitz the past two times they've met. I expect this one to be close, hopefully PSU will have the winning score.
Franklin lost to NW while at Vanderbilt? Which year 2011, 2012 or 2013 and what real relevance does that have to PSU playing NW in 2015 season?
It is all about when you play a team. Do you think Temple could beat us again now and do you think Northwestern would beat Stanford now? I say no in both cases. Our D is very stout right now and if we play mistake free offense (no turnovers), then I think we win relatively easy. I was out there in 2009 and I think I remember quite high grass on the field. I don't know how it is now.
NW beat two very good teams early in the year, and there is no doubt that had we played NW early in the year we would have gotten dusted by them. Now the question is whether our relatively young players have been coached up enough to beat a more veteran team with (we hope) less next-level talent. If we beat NW, the coaching critics ought to shut up for good.
I don't like the fact that Fitz had an extra week to prepare and get healthy for this game.
I've been very realistic about this team all year, and have said all along with the talent/experience level we have along our OL, there are/were no gimmes on the schedule from week 1. Still feel this way, but for some reason, I'm leaning towards going into MSU undefeated in the month of November. In other words, while I completely get why we won't be favored against NW and um, I think we have a (slightly) better than 50/50 shot at beating them both. As for MSU, still think they're overrated, but probably still better than us on the road.
Before their game against us, IL did not have a 'very poor' defense. It was considered a very solid D with the DL being it's strength. Many were predicting a low scoring game with IL because of their defense (and ours).
Edit: Because I know from the test board that it's your M.O. to incorrectly read into things and or put words in people' mouths and/or create straw men, let me be clear that with my post above, I am not predicting us to 'blow out' NW. I'm not even necessarily predicting us to win.
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I am kind of looking at it in a different manner. I have seen some gradual improvement each week. We have yet to play a complete game, and may not due to our continued OLine issues. But I see this week as an important test. Can we beat an above average big Ten team on the road? I will be happy if we can, no matter how ugly it looks. I believe our defense will keep us in the game, Northwestern will look at how we have struggled against running QBs and try to exploit that. It will come down to turnovers and field possession and can we take advantage of any breaks we get. The good news is that we are throwing the ball pretty well now, and have a lot of weapons they need to think about. But they had two weeks to prepare, and will be fired up at home.
ILL has given up an average of 30 pts per game over the past 6 games so I wouldn't call them a particularly "solid D". Northwestern has been much better than that even with their beat downs at Michigan and to Iowa.
I have no idea which teams are going to show up. Will NW play like the team that beat Stanford & Duke or the team that got crushed by Michigan & Iowa? Will PSU play like the team that beat Illinois or the team that struggled to get past Maryland and Army?
This game is on the road where PSU hasn't fared so well. Nebraska has been preparing for PSU for 2 weeks. So yes, I'd be surprised to see PSU score 39 points again this week. I hope I'm wrong.
We get that you feel some duty to present the glass half-empty narrative every week. It gets a little old.
I've watched enough of Penn State and Northwestern this year to state this with assurance -- Penn State's best players are better than Northwestern's best players. That would include Hackenberg, Barkley, Godwin, Zettel, Nassib, Austin Johnson, and Marcus Allen. Northwestern is a solid, well-coached, experienced team. But the talent advantage goes to Penn State.
Somehow I'd guess that if Penn State wins, you'll find some way to minimize it.
That's pretty harsh considering that I think PSU will win this game. I just don't think it's going to be a blowout. There's a reason why NW is favored by 3.
BTW, I've continually argued that PSU has better overall talent than most of our opponents, even with the sanctions. Last week I pointed out that Illinois didn't have a single recruiting class in the past 4 years that was rated as high as PSU's worst class immediately after the sanctions.
Speaking of the dudly duo, did either of them issue a "mea culpa" on any of the post game shows?
Not really, or at least now what I heard in the wrap-up show Saturday evening. Revsine did jab them a bit for their predictions.
They'll probably both pick NW this week; Mason has some bug about Penn State, and DeNardo is just dumb.
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