Recap: PSU V.S. West Virginia
Disrupt U PSU Presents The Penn State Pulse With Dylan Dawson discusses the standout performances and areas for improvement from Penn State's opening game against West Virginia. He highlights the matured play of quarterback Drew Allar, the breakout performance of wide receiver Trey Wallace, and the strong performance of the offensive line. Dawson also praises the safety play of Jaylen Reed and KJ Winston Jr. on defense, as well as the performance of the front seven. He identifies the field goal kicking as an area for improvement and questions the depth of the wide receiver room. Dawson also mentions the need for better interior run blocking.
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome back into the Penn State Pulse.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm your host, Dylan Dawson. Hell of an opening game
from the boys as they topped West Virginia in Morgantown
by the score of thirty four to twelve. Let's get
right into it with a few things that stood out
to me. First thing up, a matured Drew Aller. Drew
looked poised, he looked in control, and he was very
aggressive on Saturday. He made some NFL throws, he ran
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some guys over, and.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
He talked a little shit in between. He only threw.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Seventeen passes on the day, but that's all they needed
from him. I've discussed this before, Andy KOTTNICKI isn't gonna
go away from what's working. Drew did complete eleven of
those seventeen pass attempts for two hundred and sixteen yards
and three touchdowns, and once again another zero turnover game
from QB one one. Both Drew and the offense still
(01:02):
need to show that they can take things up a
notch against.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Those elite defenses.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
But they handled business against West Virginia and did exactly
what they were supposed to do and then some We'll
make that judgment when the time comes, but so far,
so good from Drew Roler and that Penn State offense.
Next up, Trey Wallace breakout. I've been saying it all
off season. Some of you took my word for it,
some didn't and now probably will in the future, hopefully
(01:27):
will in the future. But I'll say it again now
that we're a game end of the season with some
evidence to back it up. Trey Wallace is the twenty
twenty four Penn State football team's wide receiver one. Five catches,
one hundred and seventeen yards and two touchdowns on the
day for Trey, all coming in the.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
First half of that football game.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
We probably could have padded the stats a bit, but
PSU threw it like three times in the entire second half.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
They just didn't really need to.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That second half was more about milking the clock, leaning
on West Virginia, and getting out of there with.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
No injuries, which they did three for three.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Back to Wallace, though, you saw the top end speed
on that fifty yard touchdown catch down the scene, and
then his ball skills and athleticism on the second touchdown
catch right before halftime. That drive was awesome. By the way,
we've seen in year's pass where Penn State just kind
of kneels in that situation. They had the ball on
their own twenty with like twenty seconds left after the
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run to start the drive, and then ak opts to
chuck it deep to Amari Evans, who makes a play
on the ball, maybe a little push off.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
The next play an absolute rope from Drew.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Aller to Trey back shoulder throw in the corner of
the end zone.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Just beautiful ball, beautiful catch.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Didn't really have it last year, so that was very
encouraging to see it's all there for Trey Wallace and
we finally saw it on display against the Mountaineers.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Next is Phil trout Win's OH line.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
The final point I'm gonna hit on for the offense
is this offensive line. If you talk to me at
all before the game, you'd probably know that I wasn't
expecting a super clean game from this group right off
the bat, but that's pretty much exactly what they gave
us was a super clean game. I was expecting maybe
four or five sacks given up, just because it's game one.
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They need to figure their stuff out, get the blocking
schemes down, communicate, but everything went really well. Penn State
went for two hundred and twenty two yards on the
ground at five point three yards of pop and Drew
Aller was not sacked once. Now, West Virginia isn't an
elite defense, they don't have an elite front, but they
have some dudes to do that on the road in
(03:33):
game one is impressive. Hats off to Phil trout Wine
and hats off to that.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
O line unit. Big day from Jalen Reed and the safeties.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Moving on to the defense, you can't discuss this game
without mentioning Penn State's safety play and Jalen Reed in particular.
This unit is very deep this offseason, excuse me, this
season and the four two five is just an absolutely
perfect way to showcase that Jalen Reid in particular got
a ton of snaps in that new line position where
he was just flying all over the field. Reid finished
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with nine total tackles, two passes defense, one fumble recovery,
one tackle for loss, and a handful of big hits.
He's always been great playing down in the box. I
believe he did it a bunch in high school at
MLA MLKA High out there in Detroit. So this really
is a perfect marriage between red and that line position
and Tom Allen's defense. So reads nine tackles were actually
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second on the team for the game and first with
twelve total. You guessed it was indeed another safety, kJ
Winston Junior, who also handed out a few boomsticks himself,
finished with twelve tackles and a forced fumble of his own.
Just a huge game from the safeties.
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Speaker 2 (05:19):
Next up the big guys up front on defense. So
I went one for three on my pregame predictions and
the one I did hit on was the Penn State
holding West Virginia under one hundred total rush yards. So
that front seven saved me from striking out on those predictions.
So hat tip and thank you to the big fellas.
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West Virginia tried PSU with thirty seven rushing attempts but
only average two point three yards eclip for eighty five
total yards on the ground. Zane Durant, Tony Rojas, Alonso Ford,
and we'll go Smith Wilbert. That's all guys that really
stood out to me as well. And there's more, but
I can't really high I laid every guy on. The
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defense was just kind of one of those games where
everyone had a day. I just really liked what I
saw from the defense as a whole. I think this
transition from Many Diaz to Tom Allen could actually look
pretty seamless on the field this year, which is saying
a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Moving on, I.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Want to talk about a few areas for improvement for
Penn State. So I did say before the game that
I expected it to be a bit sloppy for both teams,
which it was for about one quarter. Then PSU started
to figure things out and just left West Virginia in
the dust. But regardless, even though it was only game
one and some of these things are a given for
every team, there are spots that Penn State needs to
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clean up by the time they're playing teams like Wisconsin,
USC and Ohio State. So The biggest problem that I
think could bite PSU down the line if not fixed
is the field goal kicking. Sanders Sahitak was the starter
to open the season, and he hooked his one attempt
on the day wide right on a forty six yarder.
I believe it was he had the power that's never
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been an issue with him, his kicking power. He didn't
have the accuracy, which is where Sander has struggled. If
you can remember back to the West Virginia game last season,
he went oh for two in the first half of
that one on field goals before he was pulled for
Alex Falcons, who ended up holding onto the starting job
and making a pretty good season out of it.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Han sa Haydak, excuse me, had his.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Chance at redemption last Saturday, and he unfortunately failed to
take advantage.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yet again.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
He did go four for four on extra points, but
just that is not going to cut it in close
games where you kind of just need every point you
can get. I stated earlier in the off season, excuse me,
that I thought walk on Ryan Barker could possibly win
the job, and he didn't even dress against West Virginia,
so I'm not sure if there's an injury.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Or what's up with that, but I will update y'all
when I can.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Bottom line, though, I'm not sure sa Haydak is the
guy for that kicking job right now, and that needs to.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Be settled asap. Next up, how deep can the wide
receivers go?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
The next thing I want to address is that exactly,
and I'm not referring to their route running. We saw
Trey Wallace go over one hundred yards and two touchdown
woman day Amari Evans had a nice day with two
catches for fifty five yards, but outside of those two guys,
not a single PSU wide receiver recorded to catch.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
So I want to know how deep can that wide
receiver room actually go. Now, I wouldn't label this a
problem just yet.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's just more just something I'll be monitoring over the
next few weeks. Haven say, passed the ball seventeen times
all game. I think it's more of a matter of
they just didn't have to air it out much. Liam
Clifford played a lot less than I expected, and I
did hear some rumblings of him being a bit banged up,
which would make sense. But a healthy Liam Clifford will
be more involved, so we'll guys like Julian Fleming. I
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seer Denmark, Cayden Saunders, maybe Ivy and Johnson. I want
to see it on the field though so not officially
an issue yet, but wide receiver depth, keep an eye
on it. Finally, I wanted to hit on the interior
run blocking. I'm probably confusing a few of y'all because
I was just praising the offensive line. I do think
(09:12):
they had an awesome game overall, but this is the
area where they left me wanting more. Singleton was able
to break a few of those long runs up the middle,
but outside of that, PSU didn't have much success at
all running between the tackles. I wanted to see them
generate more push in the middle, and it just never
really came to fruition all game. Again, though, let me
reiterate this, Penn State's offensive line, from top to bottom
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is ahead of where I thought they'd be right now
by a considerable margin. All right, let's wrap things up.
I really don't have any complaints overall. That was an
awesome way to start the season, and I'm so glad
I made the trip. I got to meet a ton
of you guys. Shout out to the weather delay for
making a lot of those interactions a possibility. Next up
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for Penn State is the Lion's home opener this Saturday,
as Bowling Green comes.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
To Happy Valley.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Because you opened as thirty one and a half point
favorites on Fandel, I think that's a little low. I
already threw some money on that, but that's gonna do
it for today's episode. Thank you guys so much for
tuning in. Let's keep the winds rolling. This has been
the Penn State Pulse with Dylan Dawson
