Nittany Lions Host Golden Flashes in Season Opener
Are you ready? Well, ready or not, here it comes! Bring on the Golden Flashes!
Saturday, September 3, is the start of the 2016 Nittany Lions campaign, in which the mighty Penn State Nittany Lions (0-0) will host the Kent State Golden Flashes (0-0) to kick off the season. Both teams are on extended losing streaks. Kent State has lost five straight,while Penn State has lost four in a row. Oy vey, something’s got to give, already, unless they both stink the place up and end up with a tie.
But seriously, folks, Penn State leads the all-time series 4-0. The most recent two meetings have been shutouts, with the Nittany Lions prevailing 24-0 and 34-0 in 2010 and 2013, respectively. This year’s game might well look similar.
I wanted to get this written early in the week in order to foment discussion as the week progresses. I mo try to do this in the future instead of rushing my ass to publish the week’s preview and prediction until the last damn minute on Friday.
Now, on with the overview of the Nitty Kitties vs. the Goldschlägers. May the Men from Kent instead of coming, went!* Is it any wonder that these guys play in Dix Stadium? Convoluted grammar, and fractured puns and limericks aside, I had to get that in somehow.
(Wait… I just noticed another limerick tie-in. Look at the Kent State football logo above. It appears to be a head and neck of a hawk with lightning shooting out of its nether regions (wither they might have gone), the whole thing being sort of contrived into the shape of a football. Well, sorta. This must have been the winner of the sixth grade art competition at Jack Lambert Middle School or something. But I digress — the associated limerick may be found in the footnotes.**)
Offensive Offenses?
Last year, these two neighboring states’ public universities had the ignominious distinction of mutually sucking at third down conversion percentage. In fact, contrary to what I might have stated elsewhere, there were in fact two teams worse than Penn State in the whole of the NCAA’s FBS Subdivision in this statistical category. (I think I had stated that Kent State was the only team worse than Penn State. Up to now, I had been too lazy to look it up.) Out of 127 teams, Penn State finished 125th, Boston College, 126th, and the Golden Flashitas sucked hind tit at 127th. The Nittany Lions finished with a dismal 27.6%, but the Golden Flashes set the absolute benchmark for third-down futility, with a sucktastic 25.4% Now that is some shitty offense!
Apparently, the folks in Kent are so ashamed of their football team that when I looked on their official sports website for blogs, I could find sites for basketball, golf, volleyball, and baseball, but not football. And when I clicked on “full details” for the Penn State game, I got a dead link. This could be denial or just webmaster incompetence, something I have to deal with routinely in some other organizations with which I’m involved, but I digress cryptically.
It is this turkey’s opinion that the KSU offense will suck miserably again this year. They haven’t yet decided on either a feature back or a quarterback. Not yet! With Penn State and Alabama on their schedule in September, what the hell are they waiting for? Some heretofore undiscovered oracle?
Oh, wait. They have to deal with the mighty, revamped PSU defense first. This means we’ll be seeing some false indications of greatness exhibited by the D.
Three running backs (freshman Justin Rankin, sophomore Myles Washington, and red shirt freshman Will Matthews) will see action.
“If you have three quarterbacks, you have no quarterback.”
They’ll fart around with three quarterbacks out of the following four: sophomore George Bollas, freshman Justin Agner, red shirt freshman Mylik Mitchell, and freshman Pat Ford). I’m still trying to figure out who might actually play. The depth chart lists Bollas or Agner or Mitchell as the starters.
PSU and KSU share recent offensive line woes. Both teams have matured. However, both offensive lines remain a question mark until we can see them play a game or two to see whether they still suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Anyhow, the Golden Flashes have 12 returning offensive starters from 2015, including the entire offensive line. Whoop-de-doo!
Dastardly Defenses?
Both teams benefit from cornerstone defensive units that do not necessarily suck so badly. Last year, Penn State finished 14th statistically in total defense while Kent State wound up 27th. While PSU lost most of its extremely sackophilic D-line, the Golden Flashes return eight defensive starters, including a highly experienced front four replete with three seniors. Last year, Kent State was 39th in pass defense and 35th in rushing defense.
So, while most pundits expect the Nittany Lions to win this game, it might not be an offensive walk in the park. Then again, it might be. We really don’t know what to expect from the revamped Penn State offense, but we know that Kent State is no slouch on defense. At least in the MAC. (Insert string of disclaimers and excuses here.)
Nothing Special
Penn State’s special teams haven’t been special for quite a while, and for that matter, neither have the Golden Flashes’. Let’s start with the 2015 Kent State rankings for kickoff and punt returns of 113th and 117th, respectively. Their net punting for an average of 37.42 earned them a middle-of-the-pack 61st ranking. Meanwhile, the Nittany Lions were 34th, 70th, and 102nd in those three categories.
Fortunately for them, the Golden Flashes lost their senior punter to graduation, so thing might be looking up. Let us hope that the Nittany Lions can find something that works for them, too. The Turkey is getting mighty tired of special teams that are anything but special.
Distinguished Alumnus — Don King
I’ve featured Kent State’s Jack Lambert before just because I’m a Steelers fan and because I like to include pictures of ugly faces when featuring opponents’ alumni — not always, but sometimes. Anyhow, Don King’s face could almost be handsome if he didn’t have such a penchant for having his hair done by sitting on a Van de Graff generator.
Ol’ Tesla Coil Hair himself, the convicted felon and boxing promoter, is this week’s featured opponent’s alumnus. King graduated from John Adams High in 1951 and attended Kent State for a while before dropping out for a career of crime and later, boxing promoting. Initially running an illegal bookmaking operation, he wound up killing a couple of guys, although one was called justifiable homicide and the other got him a second degree murder conviction that was reduced by the judge to non-negligent manslaughter. He served four years and was later pardoned by Governor Jim Rhodes.
King promoted some of the most famous fighters and matches of the 20th Century, including the “Thrilla in Manilla” between Muhammad Ali and Smokin’ Joe Frazier. Outside of boxing, he also managed The Jacksons’ 1984 Victory Tour. King has been sued by just about every prominent boxer whose fights he handled.
In 2016, Shaker Boulevard in Cleveland was renamed Don King Way. That should tell you something about Cleveland, where the 85 year-old King now resides.
Da Wedda
Present indications are for a just about perfect late summer day — sunny with a high of 76°F. Advantage: everyone!
First Official Turkey Poop Prediction of the Year
Did you miss me? Of course you did!
Who knows what to think at this stage of the season? We haven’t seen enough of this group of Nittany Lions to know what’s up on either side of the ball. So, WTF, I’m gonna pull another one straight out of my ass. (You knew that all along, didn’t you?) We’ve known from our first glance at this year’s schedule that this game is the only superpussified cupcake of a pushover opponent in the bunch, although I’ll remind you that the Golden Flashes’ defense is pretty solid — for the MAC, anyway.
I checked with Don King’s illegal bookmaking operation and found this game on the board: Penn State is favored by three touchdowns, with an over/under of 45. That equates to a predicted score of 33-12. Based on my spirit of optimism and what I feel will be a desire by Joe Moorhen to show that he can run a so-called Power Five offense (while not tipping his hand to later, more formidable opponents), the Big Pooper is going to go with Penn State 37, Kent State 6. Take the under (I think KSU offense will suck badly enough that the tacit mercy rule will apply).
I’ll be back next week with a wrap-up of the expected victory. In the meanwhile, I hope to get your take on the game.
*There once was a man from Kent
Whose dick was so long that it bent.
To save himself trouble
He put it in double,
And instead of coming, he went!
**There once was a man from Madras
Whose balls were made of brass.
In stormy weather
They clung together,
And lightning shot out of his ass!
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Big Al says
Looks like this game is drawing zero interest. Guess that’s not a surprise since the winner seems to a foregone conclusion and the size of State’s victory is the only question. Still, Kent State may have the best defense in the MAC (which isn’t saying much) and may be more of a challenge for the offense than some B1G opponents this year (i.e. Indiana and Purdue). So it will interesting to see how well the “new model offense” performs 1st time out. I’m guessing it won’t perform all that well since, unlike the Blue White game, the defense will be allowed to blitz, stem, twist, and use multiple different pass coverages.
On the other hand, Kent’s offense was probably the worst offense in the FBS last year. The were shut out 3 times and scored 7 points or less in three other games. They racked up a grand total of 70 points in their 8 MAC conference games against some of worst defenses in the country. They have nearly everybody back, but when you’re that bad, it really doesn’t matter. So, State’s defense allows more than 250 yards or more than 7 points, it could mean the defense has taken a big step back this year.
Bottom line. I expect Kent to barely cover the spread and agree with Turkey on the under. My prediction is PSU 30 KSU 10 where KSU gets one score via an interception.
And, as an extra bonus, I’m setting the over/under on Gesicki’s dropped passes at 1.5 and taking the over. CJF released his two deep today and Gesicki has basically NO back up and little pressure to change his errant ways. Plus, I saw one of SIDs preseason hype videos and he is still having trouble holding on the ball when no one is covering him.
The Nittany Turkey says
The Gesicki over/under cracked me up. This is the tight end on whom Morewood will be basing his fun ‘n’ gun offense? (Did I make you puke with the Spurrier reference?) I’ll take the over, too. He couldn’t catch last year and all indications are that his dopsy hasn’t improved.
What concerns me is that a good showing by the PSU defense in this game will have sanguinarians believing that all is well when it is merely offensive incompetence on KSU’s side of the ball evidencing itself. I propose a moratorium on evaluating the PSU defense for one more game. Yeah, it’s really nice that Sickels and Wartman are confident kids, but whether they can put their money where their mouths are is going to show on the field. But not in this game. Any way you look at it, Zettel and Johnson won’t easily be replaced.
—TNT
Joe says
Well the things that I’ll be watching are the offense-will the line truly be better, how much tempo is up-tempo, what will Trace bring to the table at QB in this new offense and what will our offensive firepower look like with that receiving corps we have and Barkley and Robinson as tandem running backs! I’m hoping that this is one of those games that we can just sit back and watch and be reasonably content with the on field product, not wringing my hands, talking to myself in some strange tongue or wondering why the hell I didn’t buy more booze!
So I do expect improvement this year and yes there will be some misfires on offense, but if this tempo is as up-tempo as we’ve been led to believe, the Golden Flashes will be on life support by the middle of the first half. I’m expecting PS to have 30 on the board by halftime and 40+ in the home section of the scoreboard at the end (Tommy Stevens will even get some meaningful reps), Barkley will hit almost 200 yds and we’ll see Andre Robinson look like he did when he played for Bishop McDevitt. McSorely will be fine and cause us not to fret that Hack is gone by hitting numerous screen and out route passes and actually running for some first downs. The defense will give up a late score, but will hold the Flashes to 10 or less and play a solid game.
And if the above doesn’t happen this Saturday, this is going to be one hell of a miserable and long season!!
The Nittany Turkey says
Well, hey, there you blow forth with all that unbridled optimism and then you throw in that last Phil Groszesque disclaimer. I was in a sanguinarian groove and then you burst my bubble.
Oy, the predictions. Sounds like you had a dream and then woke up to find your pillow gone. Only then did you realize that eating a fifteen pound marshmallow was more than a dream. Only it wasn’t a marshmallow.
Morewood sure as hell better show us some kind of new Spread HD, because so many of us are longing for this big purported change. No huddle, new quarterback, barely competent OL… should be lots of confusion, but if they can hit on a couple of plays here and there, it could be exciting, too. Good players at the skill positions help, although I haven’t seen their Wunderlich scores LOL. There’ll have to be a lot of quick thinking going on out there, which has me scratching my head about how it will all work. These are primarily parks and recreation and black studies majors, not aeronautical engineers.
But it will be interesting. I realize that Hackenberg was a crappy fit for Franklin, so maybe the departure of that component of the poor performances of the past couple of years will yield a product that is watchable.
I like it how some commenters on other, inferior blogs are already talking about giving Moorhen the HC job after Franklin gets the axe after this year. LOL. Like any of those assholes would know how to run a football team — they haven’t even learned how to change their own diapers.
And if the previously referred to doesn’t happen this Saturday, then Franklin needs to see if there’s an opening at E. Stroudsburg or Allbright or something.
The Goldschläger is ready for Saturday.
—TNT
Artificially Sweetened says
The game is nearly nigh, but I figured I still have time to produce a legit prediction and get it on record before preparing to make my way to the Cave for the festivities. This day has been anticipated since the Turkey Family Summer Sports Drought officially began on June 13, the day after our fellow fowl Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup.
I had plenty of time to confer with my consultants while waiting out Hurricane Hermine this week, which did not have any effects other than to overfill the swimming pool and wash my minivan. Our prediction is 35-10. We think that jitters and inexperience will result in an interception and scoring opportunity for KSU as Al said. I thought the consultants had partaken of the Nittany Kool-Aid, because we scored over 34 points in only two games last year.
However, my consultants pointed out that in Kent State’s first outing of last season, they were smashed 52-3 by University of Illinois. Later, PSU crushed U of I 39-0. Transitivity would predict a final score of 91-3, as applied to last year’s teams. We all know that transitivity does not apply to football, but it provides a bit of comfort when going out on a limb.