No Offense, but…

No offense, but Penn State (2–5, 0–4 Big Ten) lost another one, a Homecoming embarrassment, in front of 108,000+ fans. In this week’s debacle, the Nittany Lions defense held their opponents, the Iowa Hawkeyes (5–2, 3–1 Big Ten), to a mere six points, but the offense could not supply enough points to beat them. The final score was 6–4.

No offense, but the Nittany Lions cannot win in the Big Ten with a scoring average of 6.8 ppg. This week, the lack of offense set an all time futility low, with a mighty four points, none of which could be even remotely credited to the offense. One Iowa safety was the result of a bad snap and the other was intentional. Give the defense the points for having hemmed in the Hawkeyes deep in their own territory.

No offense, but 6–3 would have been a more acceptable score than 6–4 because it would have meant that the offense was competent enough to kick a field goal. It wasn’t.

No offense, but the defense did its job. The offense didn’t show up. All the defense needed from them to validate their excellent effort was a measly seven points. The offense couldn’t come up with any!

No offense, but if Mills gets knocked out of the game, is it really wise to replace him with Michael Robinson, the only talented receiver on the team? Perhaps still rattled by the concussion he suffered, Robinson was ineffectual at QB, turning the ball over three times. Because the rules state that he cannot throw to himself, he had no receivers.

No offense, but wouldn’t it have been appropriate to send Morelli into the game instead at QB? If he is the future of the team, he needs game reps—now. Paterno said at the post-game press conference that with Robinson having been hurt on what turned out to be the last offensive series, if there had been another series he would have been forced to put Mills back in, hurt as he was. JoePa thought it wouldn’t have been “fair” to put the pressure on Morelli—the invisible man.

No offense, but where is Chris Ganter, speaking of invisible men?

No offense, but the defense is improving dramatically weekly—so, how long will they keep up the intensity if they are frustrated by an offense that cannot even give them seven points a game?

No offense, but I’m offended when the opposing coach has so little regard for our offense that with only a four point lead, he hands us two points, confident that we wouldn’t be able to score the field goal that would be needed to take the lead. He was, of course, right. Michael Robinson threw a pick on Penn State’s very next play from scrimmage.

No offense, but every time the defense made a potentially game changing play or hung tough to get the ball back, I cringed. I knew the offense couldn’t do squat with the ball in their hands. ??? ????? ?? ???????? ????? This is worse than a sinking feeling—it’s the whole damn Titanic every week.

No offense, but just when I thought we had fixed some of the turnover problems, we wound up with five turnovers in this pitiful game.

No offense, but when you have no running game, going 9-28 passing just doesn’t cut it. This lethal combination led to a 4-16 third down efficiency. ????? ???? ????? The Mighty Penn State Nittany Lions had a total of six first downs in the game, one of them questionable.

No offense, but I cannot completely exonerate the defense. With time left on the clock, it looked like they would hold Iowa to a field goal attempt and get the ball back to the offense with enough time for a desperation drive. With a successful attempt, the score would have been 9-4; a touchdown would have been needed to surmount the deficit, which was highly unlikely. 365 bet Instead of the field goal try, Iowa opted to once again insult our offense by going for the first down. They knew that if they failed on their try, our no-offense ineptitude would give them a 6–4 win. We’ll never know whether that strategy would have worked, though, because our defense jumped offside, giving the Hawkeyes a first down by penalty, allowing them to run out the clock. Once again, the Iowa coaching staff looked like geniuses while we looked like schlemiels.

No offense, but screw this! The Nittany Turkey is offended that his favorite team is destined to dwell in the dank, dark, dusty dungeon of Big Ten ineptitude with the Hoosiers and the Illini. We don’t get to play Illinois this year, but the Indiana game on November 13 is shaping up to be Battle of the Buffoons. It could determine the lowest of the low.

No offense, but… We have NO OFFENSE. Period.