COLUMBUS, Ohio — The fussy, that populous cohort among college football fans, had themselves a banquet of imperfection to observe here around midday Saturday. Some of them might have turned up amid the 105,506 at Ohio Stadium. Some of them might have grumbled about No. 3 Ohio State or No. 7 Penn State. What manna of muddle they witnessed.
They could have lamented Penn State, which lost, 20-12, after trailing 20-6 in the final seconds. They could have nitpicked Ohio State, which won, 20-12, after leading 20-6 in the final seconds. They could have groused about a game that, in this era of offense, spent a throwback amount of time lodged at the grubby score of 10-6. Some might have groused that Penn State’s losing streak against Ohio State (7-0, 4-0 Big Ten) had stretched to seven and that Coach James Franklin’s record against Ohio State had dipped to 1-9. Others, if especially surly, might have noticed how Ohio State had inched to its go-ahead touchdown in the second quarter after several Penn State penalties. While grousing, they probably didn’t even credit the defenses, which began the fray ranked No. 1 (Penn State) and No. 2 (Ohio State) in yards allowed per play.
They saw Penn State (6-1, 3-1), which began the day as the nation’s No. 20 team in third-down conversions, start off 0 for 15 and wind up 1 for 16, and they probably lamented that last-ditch breach of poetry. They saw Ohio State get inside the 1-yard line late in the third quarter with two downs to spare, then find itself stuffed at the 2. They saw 37 incompletions, which must have come as deeply pleasing. They could have remarked in a huff that these did not resemble College Football Playoff teams — and might have wondered what Michigan might do to each, especially if Michigan intercepts their signals.
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About the only thing they couldn’t complain about, besides the defenses or the kickers who went a combined 4 for 5, would have been Marvin Harrison Jr., the virtuoso Ohio State wide receiver. Anyone who complains about Harrison would qualify as a paragon of glumness.
Harrison caught 11 passes for 162 yards and a touchdown, influencing the game as few can from a position pretty far from the ball at each snap. He drew a holding penalty in the second quarter on another great player, Penn State cornerback Kalen King, nullifying a 60-yard sack-and-fumble-and-return by King’s teammate Curtis Jacobs. He caught one pass while in the process of getting interfered with. His winding 18-yard touchdown catch on a short ball over the middle with 4:07 to play clinched matters. So of course even he went ahead and dwelled among the persnickety on the subject of himself. It’s part of what makes him a widely projected top-five NFL draft pick.
“How many targets I got today, that’s probably how many catches I should have had,” he said with his characteristic graciousness. “And that’s kind of the standard I hold myself to. I try to do my part, help the team. I don’t know how many targets I had, but there were too many incompletions out there today.”
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The stats showed him with 16 targets. He planned to ponder the five incompletions.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “My dad” — the Pro Football Hall of Fame wideout — “instilled that in me.”
Otherwise, any listener to postgame interviews might have heard that common college football phrase of “a lot to clean up,” as uttered by Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord, the first-year starter who stayed spotless record-wise after going 22 for 35 for 286 yards and a touchdown. Or they might have heard later how sophomore Penn State quarterback Drew Allar evaluated himself.
“Sucked,” he told reporters.
He started off 10 for 31 and finished 18 for 42, numbers that used to feel normal in a 19-year-old quarterback’s development, but society doesn’t have time for that anymore. Society recently has seen Trevor Lawrence, Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud, for example.
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Appreciating this big game might have been left to those who relish a Big Ten defensive tussle, and those sorts do still exist. “It’s a long, hard fight, [a] war that you have to put your body through,” Ohio State defensive end JT Tuimoloau said. Of opposing Olumuyiwa Fashanu, Penn State’s standout offensive lineman, Tuimoloau said, “It was going to be a great battle — and it was.”
Ohio State held Penn State to 240 yards, notched four sacks and had the Nittany Lions stuck beneath 200 yards until a closing drive of limited relevance. One might fuss that the Penn State offense — No. 77 in yards per play coming in — might not be that hard to hold. “‘You’re not just playing the Penn State offense; you’re playing the Penn State defense,’” Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said he told the Buckeyes. “‘They make one play, you’ve got to make two. They make two, you’ve got to make three.’ So it’s a sense of maturity and leadership.”
Franklin, leading his 10th Penn State team, started by saying, “Like always, want to give Ohio State a ton of credit,” which seemed to summarize the past decade even if that had not been his intent. He soon added, “To me, really the story of the game came down to third down.” He got questions about a foiled play call just after Ohio State had muffed a punt late in the third quarter, about a failed fourth-down bid in the fourth and about whether he considered bringing in the backup quarterback. “A one-possession game,” he said. “Felt like we were in it, so to make that type of change, I don’t know if that’s the best thing for our locker room.” He got questions about his team’s wideouts and a lack of plays that might scare a foe or addle a defense. “Obviously when you look at it today and the combination of the lack of success on third down and the lack of explosive plays, we’ve got to look at that hard,” he said.
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After all, the players who reach positions of such public scrutiny at such young ages often get there by being the most fussy of all.
“Nobody wants to feel this way,” Allar said. “We put countless hours of hard work in. It sucks to have a result like this, but we have to watch it, learn from it, because if we don’t learn from it, we’re just fooling ourselves. We have to really be critical of this film and just really learn from it and, you know, not let this happen again.”
As critics, at least, they won’t be lonely.
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