As this ancient, battered Turkey gradually heals from the great neckal fusion movement, he rediscovered his turkey neck with the removal of the dreaded neck brace for long enough to take a hike in the woods. Sharing this egocentric milestone with you, I present the picture at left as the official commemorative post-neck brace photo. While the post-surgery evaluation does not take place until next Wednesday, after 11 weeks of being constantly strangled by the damn thing, I decided that my neck needed some fresh air. So as to provide a tie-in with the theme of this blog, I wore my PSU Alumni Association Central Florida Chapter T-shirt, which proudly features the anatomically incorrect five-toed mutant Nittany Lion footprint, to which this Turkey has violently objected for a long, long time.
Archives for September 2007
Lions on the Road at Illinois
Here’s something new—a Big Ten road game in which Penn State is a three-point favorite. Well, not so new. Didn’t come out too well the last time we had that situation, did it? Accordingly, let’s try not to underestimate Illinois (3-1, 1-0 Big Ten). They’re not the non-pugilistic Illini of yesteryear.
Are they still the “Fighting Illini” or just the Illini? Has the NCAA succeeded in cleansing their nickname and banishing their mascot, Chief Illiniwek? I don’t know, but see my commentary last year if you want some background on this ridiculous crapola. Last year’s game, by the way, wound up in the “W” column for Dear Old State, being homecoming and all. The final score was 26-12, but it was a lot closer than that score suggests.
Illinois head coach Ron Zook, after having been summarily run out of the Sunshine State, has done one helluva job of putting a team together at Illinois. They have an excellent running game and a good defense. Their weaknesses are the kicking game and the passing offense.
So, let’s start by predicting what Penn State’s offense will look like. Um, it will look pretty much like last week’s. There’s a difference, though. Illinois has a competent pass rush, and might be in Morelli’s face more than Michigan was. (It was amazing that our inept offensive line protected Morelli as well as it did, but that was more due to the fact that Michigan sucked than that our line performed above itself.) In any case, we’ll see the running game (or lack of same) featured once again, which pretty much means no offense until the second half. And if Morelli takes his usual six seconds to find a receiver to throw to, we’ll see a lot of rushes and sacks. (Can it really be called a “rush” if he’s sitting back there with his thumbs up his ass not seeing the field? But I digress.) So, plodding along, Penn State will either dig a hole for itself or exit the first half with a slim lead. Ho hum. Same old shit.
Meanwhile, Illinois’ offense is built around a serviceable running game. Juice Williams is a good option quarterback who can burn opponents with the run and Rashard Mendenhall is one of the top tailbacks in the Big Ten. Williams was a green freshman last year, and we kept him corraled, but Mendenhall was unstoppable, with 14 carries for 161 yards and a touchdown. Last week, he lit up Indiana for 214 yards, and he’s rushed for 536 yards thus far this season. He’ll be getting a lot of carries against Penn State, as Zook & Co. have undoubtedly watched the films of the Mike Hart ballet from last week. Of course, if they did, they’ve seen that Hart had to work hard to grind it out against the excellent Penn State front seven, and the same will apply to Mendenhall. The yards gained will not be easy ones, and he’ll need to have at least 100 of them to do enough damage to put this game in jeopardy. Williams, of course, is slippery and tricky, which can cause trouble if this defense doesn’t stay at home or overcommits. However, this Turkey thinks that the Juicemeister is in for a long, painful day.
To be honest, this game worries me, primarily because it is now clear that our offense sucks beyond mere suckage. At the Tuesday press conference, Paterno wouldn’t say whether Austin Scott would start—he was droning on about Scott having been patient and earning his chance to play. Well, hell, what does he have to do to un-earn that chance if three fumbles in two games doesn’t do it for him? So, we’ll see either Scott or Kinlaw doing the usual thing unless Illinois should happen to get lucky and score early. Illinois’ best hope is to shut down the running game, such as it is, to force Morelli to throw. (Never thought we’d be so weak at the passing game with big-arm Morelli and those vaunted receivers, did you? Hell, we couldn’t even blame last week’s screw-ups on the offensive line; Morelli underperformed all by himself.) This has the smell of a close, low scoring game, and I’m not even sure which way it will go. My opinion of our offense has fallen precipitously in the past couple of weeks, leading to a lack of confidence. Once again, I hope they prove me wrong.
And now, the Official Turkey Poop Prognostication, a regular feature of this column, and usually wrong. But what the hell—everyone makes predictions. We all know how that game works. You get it right and bragging rights accrue to you. You mouth off and let ’em all know how right you were. You get it wrong and you shut up. You disavow any knowledge of the prediction. You minimize your screw-up and move on. Anyhow, I can no longer predict any final scores in which Penn State’s point production gets out of the teens. The offense just seems that piss poor to me. So, here’s my no-risk prediction for this game. Penn State 16, Illinois 12. (I hope the damn offense can manage to score 16 lousy points—I mean, even Syracuse put 20 on Illinois! Sheeeeeit.)
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This is Senior Leadership
I’ve been told that I’m too hard on Morelli, because he can only do what his coaches tell him to do. Furthermore, I’ve been told that those coaches have “ruined” him. However, in order to ruin something, there has to be something to ruin. Get what I mean? A rifle arm and a cadre of vaunted receivers is going to waste here, and the guy with the arm has to bear a fair share of the responsibility for his own conduct and level of play.
If we would have beaten Michigan, it would have shut a lot of grousing mouths about the coaching, but Morelli’s performance on the field would have spoken for itself. He doesn’t shine as an individual performer, but moreover, he is not providing leadership appropriate to his being elected a captain. One has to wonder whether Paterno manipulated the selection of this year’s captains, as Phil Grosz suggested.
Morelli has had his share of maturity problems at PSU from the start. I guess that goes with the territory when you’re a young guy who has been told how great he was all the way through high school. His freshman year was the time for him to get that out of his system but as you’ll see below, apparently he hasn’t. I suppose it can be argued that coaches function in loco parentis, and share some of the responsibility for Morelli’s retarded emotional development. In that regard, the coaches should be blamed for Quarless’ and Harriot’s off-campus underage drinking and Scirrotto’s Midnight Melee at the Meridian II, too. Not likely. These kids are in college now and they are old enough to know better. They must be held directly responsible for their nefarious conduct and not shielded by placing the blame on incompetent coaching.
Morelli seemed to not have his head in the game at Michigan Stadium. He didn’t take care of the ball deep in his own territory, and handed Michigan a touchdown. He missed Deon Butler who was wide open, denying us a score. Any of the McCabe Sisters could have made that throw. He seemed uncomfortable and flustered at times in the pocket. What is troubling this guy? Is it the coaching? Is he just a schmuck? Is his poor performance a rebellion against the coaching schemata? Yeah, that would be a very mature approach, now wouldn’t it?
I suppose you’re wondering what got me going here. Well, I’ll tell you. Stewart Mandel’s mailbag on Si.com yesterday bore the following comments from a Michigan fan:
“I was at the game right behind the PSU bench cheering for Michigan with my brother in law who is a PSU fan. We could not believe it when the PSU starting QB was yelling at fans during the game. The more the fans got on him the more he taunted us back. At one point he was on the phone with a coach and he was trying to listen but was gesturing to us rather than really focusing. The sad time was when he told one fan who was riding him hard to come on the field and say that. Joe Pa was in the game. His coaches were in the game. I am a UofM fan and football fan. WHen your QB is more concerned with the fans rather than the game maybe he should look elsewhere for leadership. Coaches had to tell him and another starter to ignore the fans and play ball. Not a coaches fault his kids do not understand that games are won on the field. Play calling was ok but his players just didn’t execute. One player was wide open and the QB just did not look his way. The last drive had one Michigan reception that the PSU coaches told the corner to watch and that play he ‘forgot’ because that was the route they ran. The sacks were just blown assignments. One thing that got me though and i will leave on this note is how can the PSU QB be laughing while walking the sidelines when he played that badly. His WR were open. Thank god he was too busy yelling at us in the stands to see them. If you do not believe me watch the tape LOL. All the fans commented after the game that they have never seen a player become so obsessed with the fans he would have conversations with them!!!”
Can you believe that? OK, so the comment was made by a Michigan fan, so it is undoubtedly and understandably biased. On the other hand, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If any part of this is true about Morelli, he should be sitting for the Illinois game. (Yeah, like that will happen.)
Obviously, a college football team cannot go undefeated every year. (Even Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma teams in the 1950s eventually lost one.) So, there will be losses. Losses always hurt us fans—we who live vicariously through our teams and are validated by their successes. So, if we have to lose a game, the blow is softened if we know that each player gave his best effort; any suggestion that someone is out there screwing off tends to piss me off royally. I wouldn’t condone that taunting crap if it took place in the Temple game with Penn State up 79-0 in the fourth quarter, let alone in the biggest game of the year whose outcome was in doubt up to the final minute or two.
Is this senior leadership?
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