The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Home Archives for Terrelle Pryor

Pryor Eligible for NFL Supplemental

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Terrelle “Cash for ‘Graphs” Pryor, disgraced Ohio State quarterback and former Jeanette, PA All-State football and basketball star, was declared eligible for the NFL Supplemental Draft, which will be held “soon.” There was however, one proviso. The league decided that Pryor would serve a five-game suspension as soon as he is drafted by some NFL team.

Pryor won’t be able to suit up until the sixth game of the season, assuming that he is drafted, and although he is not completely happy with that situation, both he and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, know that the opportunity of playing in the NFL is worth the wait.

NFL players aren’t very happy about the notion that the league can suspend a player before he is even hired. One player representative stated that this opens up a Pandora’s Box with all kinds of potentially nasty surprises.

Meanwhile, others are concerned that players who screw up in the NCAA will just hop off the train and onto the NFL luxury liner. NFL spokespeople said that it is the league’s hope that this will be deterred by the prospect of similar suspensions.

But with half a year’s rookie salary being more money than these guys have ever seen before (except possibly the Miami Hurricanes), it is likely that they would gladly opt to take the punishment in exchange for a contract and a chance at an NFL career.

The Supplemental Draft will be conducted sometime next week without the rigid structure and hoopla of the regular draft.

The Cream Rises to the Top

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Iowa was a pretender. Penn State was a pretender. They both went down today, while Ohio State showed that they can play football.

This Turkey had nagging suspicions each time he sat down to preview a game this season, suspicions that Penn State had not yet played a decent football team. That instinct proved to be accurate.

Meanwhile, Iowa, the Kardiac Kids, kept winning and somehow made it up to #4 nationally. Each game they played made me wonder how they managed to keep winning. Turns out that they, too, had been playing against chumps. All it took was an injury to their starting quarterback and they were exposed for what they really are. If you have suffered a brain injury, then you can check out brain injury attorneys from. If there are injuries from truck accident , then attorneys for the same can be hired from here!

I’m not saying that Ohio State’s 24-7 victory over Penn State on Saturday puts the Buckeyes up there among the college football elite. This year’s team is not even close to being among the best they have put on the field at Ohio Stadium. They did what they had to do to win, and that’s what good teams do.

So, yeah, in one fell swoop, Iowa (9-1, 5-1 Big Ten) and Penn State (8-2, 4-2 Big Ten) wind up sucking hind tit while Ohio State (8-2, 5-1 Big Ten) puts itself in a position to snatch up yet another Big Ten championship with a win over Iowa next week in Columbus.

Of the two vaunted defenses, Penn State indeed proved itself to be the pretender. The Nittany Lions, who appeared slightly better on paper than the Buckeyes, wound up surrendering 228 rushing yards, while they were only able to run for 76 yards themselves. The Ohio State front seven is the most competent the Lions have faced this season, and they pushed around the hapless PSU offensive line pretty badly.

Penn State was 4-16 on third down conversions and had only nine first downs to OSU’s 15. This, of course, meant that there was a lot of punting going on, which is a very dangerous thing for Penn State, in that the punt coverage has sucked all year.

Ohio State’s Ray Small had a damn field day returning punts. He had 130 yards on seven returns, the longest being a 45-yarder at the end of the third quarter which would have gone all the way were it not for punter Jeremy Boone’s saving tackle. On an earlier big play back in the first quarter, Small scampered for a 41 yard return that put the Buckeyes in the red zone, from whence they scored their first touchdown of the day.

Here’s Buckeye quarterback Terrelle Pryor’s take on how big Small was for a small guy: “It was big. Ray Small, no one understands how big of a player Ray Small is. He’s small but he makes a lot of plays, and he’s so fast. For him to take it down there and for us to punch it in and take care of the opportunity, it was huge for us to go up 7-0.”

From the small Small’s big return forward, Penn State was in the hole, and they kept digging themselves in deeper. The defense could not contain Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor — either passing or running. He had 5 rushes for 50 yards and a touchdown, and was 8-17 passing for 125 yards and two touchdowns. His was a competent performance without any serious errors.

Meanwhile, Daryll Clark had a miserable day behind a mediocre offensive line that could not afford him the protection he deserved. Clark was 12-28 for 125 yards and one inconsequential interception.

The Penn State running game, as I alluded above, was not present. Evan Royster, who had hurt himself in practice and had shaken off the injury to play, had only 13 carries for 36 yards. His long run was 8 yards. Daryll Clark was the second leading rusher with 20 yards.

Derek Moye had no catches, as the Ohio State secondary chose to cover him closely. Thus, Graham Zug was the leading receiver with 7 catches for 96 yards.

Say what you will about Pryor, but this Turkey says that he played a good game, and the proof is on the scoreboard. He hit the passes he needed to hit and he was a slippery runner, as usual.

Unfortunately, our hitherto quasi-untested Nittany Lion secondary proved itself to not up to today’s big time test, as Ohio State’s DeVier Posey slipped behind the safeties for a third-quarter touchdown reception that broke the Lions’ spirit. That made it 17-7. Ohio State would score one more touchdown; Penn State would not score again.

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The Much Anticipated

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The much anticipated, much ballyhooed OSU-PSU game is upon us. At season’s outset, we all thought November 7 would be the bigggggggggggg day for the bigggggggggggg game, but it has turned out to be a little less consequential than the pre-season hype would have had it. (Yeah, the rose colored glasses were all seeing the winner of this battle going to the SSMNC game, while the loser would have to cry in their beer in Pasadena, thinking about what might have been.) The NCAA FBS is a cruel world, however, and things usually don’t tend to work out as our simplistically idealistic pundits would want them to.

So, #11 Penn State (8-1, 4-1 Big Ten) will host #15 Ohio State (7-2, 4-1 Big Ten), not for all the proverbial marbles but presumably for some pretty significant agates, namely, a potential piece of the Big Ten championship and peradventure, a possible BCS bowl, perhaps, maybe, perchance.

This is where hack sportswriters typically get into pontificating about who is going to what bowl if this and that happens, and who “controls their own destiny.” This is where this Turkey gets off. I’m with Paterno. Play the damn games one at a time without characterizing them with something in particular that has a p=.31 probability of happening if our team wins, Iowa loses, Michigan beats OSU down the road, Obama farts, and Paris Hilton is found to be mono-orgasmic.

I particularly despise the trite piece of crap sports slang: “controls one’s own destiny.” See my earlier post on the subject.

But this isn’t about me. Or is it? Yeah, I write this stuff to amuse myself, but I hope that in the process, I’m amusing someone out there in the vast, silent but bucolic pond of kindred spirits who read the Turkey, as well as in the fetid, redolent, malodorous cesspool from whence steenking Turkey haters surface occasionally to accuse this pristine journalist of not giving Iowa enough credit whilst dissing Paris Hilton’s dysfunctional clitoris. But I digress.

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