PENN STATE STUNNED BY LOSS TO MINNESOTA
Missed opportunities plague Nittany Lions as Minnesota stays undefeated
MINNEAPOLIS — Against all odds, Penn State had a chance to take a late lead Saturday against Minnesota.
Several times throughout the game, it looked as if the fifth-ranked Nittany Lions just didn’t have enough. And then suddenly, they did.
Penn State got the ball with 6:17 left, down 12 points, drove 63 yards in eight plays and scored to make it a five-point game.
When Minnesota got the ball back, the Nittany Lions defense stuffed them, so Penn State had one more shot with 2:40 left in the game.
Quarterback Sean Clifford found wide receiver Jahan Dotson for a 49-yard gain over the middle, bringing the ball to the Gophers 11 and fostering hope. A 15-yard offensive penalty put Penn State in a hole, though, and on third-and-24 from the 25, Clifford threw high over his target and behind another receiver and the pass was intercepted with 1:01 left .
The Gophers, (9-0, 6-0 Big Ten) knelt twice and the
Nittany Lions (8-1, 5-1) saw their undefeated season slip from their grasp, losing to Minnesota, 31-26, at TCF Bank Stadium.
“The ball was intended to go to Jahan,” a solemn Clifford said of the late interception. “And I missed.”
“I’m disappointed in our execution in the first half,” added linebacker Jan Johnson. “But I’m not disappointed in the way that we fought. I think that we fought really well. I was proud of a lot of the guys that we were able to come up with a stop, and we had a chance at the end. So I’m pleased and happy with the way that we fought, just disappointed with the execution in the first half.”
Minnesota jumped on Penn State right from the start. The Nittany Lions received the opening kickoff, and on their first drive, quarterback Sean Clifford launched a ball down the middle of the field for wide receiver Justin Shorter. But Shorter was beaten to the ball by Gophers safety Antoine Winfield, who intercepted it and sent momentum in his team’s favor.
Just five plays later, Minnesota quarterback Tanner Morgan found receiver Rashod Bateman up the right sideline, and he ran pretty much untouched for a 66-yard score.
Penn State answered with a 45-yard touchdown run from running back Journey Brown. Brown started in place of Noah Cain, who was held out with an ankle injury.
The Golden Gophers found more success through the air on their next drive, and they punched it in with a 21-yard touchdown on a tunnel screen to wideout Chris Autman-Bell.
And so the cycle began. The Nittany Lions never tied or took the lead for the rest of the game. When the offense looked potent and just needed the defense to get a stop, Minnesota would find its receivers wide open in Penn State’s secondary. When the offense truly needed a score, dropped passes and general sloppiness plagued them.
“The game played out the way they wanted it to play out,” Penn state coach James Franklin said. “Dominate time of possession, turnovers — that’s how they’ve been playing all year long. We started poorly. In the first half we had interceptions, we had blown coverages, we had missed tackles. We did not play well in the first half. We did not. And then we did enough in the second half to have a chance to win the game, but weren’t able to finish it in the red zone.”
Perhaps the most glaring example of a missed opportunity came with around 11 minutes left in the game. Trailing by 12 points, the Nittany Lions had the ball first-and-goal at Minnesota’s 9 with a chance to punch back once again.
On the first play, running back Devyn Ford, who hadn’t seen the field until that drive, plunged forward for 2 yards. On second-and-goal, Ford got 3 yards. On third-and-goal, quarterback Sean Clifford faked a handoff and ran forward for a 1yard loss. Then, facing fourthand-goal from the 5, Clifford took the snap and lobbed a pass to the corner of the end zone, but star wide receiver KJ Hamler couldn’t come up with it.
There were moments like that throughout the game that were turning points. Penn State had three plays to score a touchdown heading into halftime, with the ball on the Gophers 7. But a spiked ball, and incompletion and a failed Clifford run later, and the Nittany Lions had to settle for a field goal.
Earlier in that quarter, Clifford threw another interception to Winfield while Penn State was driving into opposing territory.
Clifford’s third interception, the game-ender, was the last of those moments.