There were plenty of big wigs in attendance today as Penn State football travelled to Evanston, Illinois to take on the Northwestern Wildcats. Chicago Bears General Manager Ryan Pace was in the press box, along with three scouts from the Chicago Bears, and personnel from five more NFL teams: Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets, New York Giants, San Diego Chargers and Minnesota Vikings.
There were also reps from three bowl games: Florida Citrus, Holiday and Foster Farms.
What they witnessed was the cliche “tale of two halves.”
This Penn State football team was down 20-7 at halftime, despite out-gaining the Wildcats 123-80 at the break. Northwestern starting quarterback Clayton Thorson was knocked out of the game early on with a leg injury, and eventually the momentum swung completely away from NU and towards the favor of Penn State as the Nittany Lions went up 21-20 early in the fourth quarter.
Northwestern back-up QB Zack Oliver did find Christian Jones for a 14 yard touchdown pass just before halftime, and then he found the resolve to lead the Wildcats on the game winning drive late in the fourth quarter. NU was certainly aided by some very questionable-at-best clock management by Penn State football coach James Franklin down the stretch.
Franklin’s failure to use a timeout cost PSU about 35 seconds to work with and Northwestern emerged victorious 23-21.
Franklin owned up to his mistake in the post game press conference.
“I should have burned a time out there,” Franklin said of the situation.
“I should have used a time out right away, it was a missed opportunity by me on that play-call.”
In addition to the mea culpa, Franklin took ownership of the fact that the buck stops with him, not his coaching staff when it comes calling timeout.
“The responsibility is on me,” Franklin said.
PSU quarterback Christian Hackenberg finished 20-39 for 198 yards passing, no touchdowns and one interception. There wasn’t much “Sackenberg” today as the Cats brought him down just twice, but Hackenberg (no doubt the main attraction for all the NFL personnel in attendance) was harassed, hurried and pressured all day by the Wildcats stellar defensive front.
Hack had to utilize his speed (Franklin says that Hackenberg runs a 4.7 40-yard dash) to escape from attacking Wildcats defenders all day. He remains one touchdown pass shy of tying Matt McGloin for the Penn State football record in career TD passes.
“Our guys bounce back, our guys are resilient,” said Franklin of his team, as they head into the bye week.
Franklin did not give a concrete injury update on stellar DL Carl Nassib, but he did offer this:
“Obviously he’s the guy who’s leading the country in sacks, and is all-time sack leader in school history, so not having him out there is significant. We’ll see. We weren’t able to have him out there at the end of the game, but hopefully we’ll be able to get him back soon.“
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