In Which I Sidestep The Elephant In The Room

So I'm back. I've had a long list of posts stewing in my head that I've wanted to write for a while, but sadly, real life and responsibilities intervened. I have absolutely no interest in discussing... whatever the heck that was that occurred from roughly 1pm to 5pm yesterday. This is Ali's blog, so I'll let him have the fun of dissecting that. I'm just an occasional interloper here, so I can (and will) write about whatever the heck I want.

Chug the blue & white stuff long enough, and eventually this will be the only Outback Bowl you remember.

So This Is My Outback Bowl Paragraph.
D'Anton Lynn is a beast. Wisniewski deserves all the praise he was getting from the announcers. I'll miss all of the seniors (especially Royster, Wiz, and Brackett) and wish them all the best in their future endeavors. And that's all I have to say about that.

Over the next couple days I hope to put up three posts on topics that have been on my mind since November. This is the first of those. The next post will be a miscellaneous smorgasbord of updates, and finally, look for my take on Joe and the future in a forthcoming post. This will be something of a counterpoint to two of Ali's more recent posts.

And now, on with the show.

QB Controversiality (Didn't we already go through this crap back in August?)

Answer. Leader. Disappointment?

So yesterday's game necessarily puts this topic in a different light than when I intended to write about it back in November. I have a feeling more people will be a little more sympathetic to my viewpoint now; however, as someone who has been on “Team Bolden” throughout the course of the season, it's interesting to watch how short the collective memory of the PSU fan base is, and how quickly they can turn on their own. After the Youngstown State game, Bolden was “the chosen one” - the young golden boy who was going to lead the Nittany Lions to a better-than-originally-expected year. Fast forward to October after losses to Alabama and Iowa, and the romance phase was now over – PSU was going to have the year pretty much everyone expected. After the embarrassing loss to Illinois where Bolden made one good play and had a painful pick six, “Bolden sucks” became the mantra. Of course, this only intensified when McGloin had success against Minnesota and then devastated Michigan's excuse for a defense. Suddenly, PSU had a new savior. While I was thinking, “Man, look at how awful Michigan's defense is,” most PSU fans were thinking, “Man, Matt McGloin is the answer!” Bolden coughing up the ball early against Northwestern, followed by Matt McGloin leading a valiant come-from-behind effort seemed to confirm where everyone's head was at. Then, after the Ohio State game and a couple pick sixes (complete with comparisons to The-QB-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named), McGloin's romance phase was over. The loss to Michigan State left some doubtful about how good McGloin really was. And now with yesterday's bowl results, Matt McGloin is being ripped to shreds by “experts” all over the interwebs as the worst failure in the history of the program.

I'm not going to bash McGloin. I'm not going to verbally attack a 21 year old kid because he doesn't play football as well as I'd like him to. I'm also not going to say the coaches made the wrong call. My original disclaimer I made however many articles ago about the coaches forgetting more about football than I'd ever know still stands. Moreover, the coaches see things in practice that none of us know anything about. Heck, I'll even side with the coaches that starting McGloin against Ohio State was the right thing to do – he was playing hot, and you don't bench a hot QB. That said, I'm willing to question the coaching staff on one specific decision.

Prodigy. Failure. Future?

Let's go back to the Northwestern game. The previous game, PSU's backup quarterback had done everything he was asked to do against a woefully inadequate Michigan defense. Despite questioning from the media, both the backup QB and the QB coach insist that “it's Rob Bolden's job.” Then, later that week, JoePa changes things. It's announced that there will be a competition. Bolden, whose status as the starter was never officially in doubt from the first game of the season through this week, wins the competition during the week of practice. Bolden is to start. Bolden starts the game. Bolden has two decent drives where he cumulatively completes 3 of 4 passes for 43 yards and rushes for 7 yards. Both drives start around PSU's 20 and get down to Northwestern's 30 yard line but don't end in points. The second drive ends with Bolden getting sacked and turning over the ball. McGloin comes in on PSU's next two drives. McGloin completes 3 of 9 passes for 39 yards and no rushing. Both drives start around PSU's 20 and neither drive crosses midfield. McGloin stays in after that and wins the game. My question is – why?

Why were the coaches so quick to bench Bolden after his second drive? Yes, that drive ended in a turnover, but whose fault was that – Bolden's or the offensive line's? McGloin loyalists will say that Bolden should have picked up on the blitz and gotten the ball off quicker. That may be true. But was the mistake really so severe that it warranted pulling the starter – who had ostensibly proved that very week in practice that he deserved to be the starter – and benching him the entire rest of the game no matter how his backup performed? If McGloin had been treated the same as Bolden, McGloin never would have gotten that third drive to redeem himself, Newsome would have been put in, and who knows where PSU would be now. What might Bolden have done with a third drive? We'll never know. But my personal opinion is that Bolden could have performed at least as well against the competition that McGloin faced if given the same chance. Again, I'm loathe to pretend I know more than the coaches about football because I don't. But that's one decision I just don't understand.

Having teams is fun and all, but let's not stoop to this. Please?

For now, I'm squarely in the “Team Bolden” camp right where I've always been. I would imagine after yesterday's game, a sizable chunk of former McGloin cheerleaders are now with me. Welcome to the fold. That said, my real hope is that now we'll have a real and open competition between all the QBs that will drive all of them to grow and develop. Bolden certainly has room to improve. I'd like to see Bolden win the competition just because of the investment that's already been made in developing him and giving him experience against good defenses (and I also think that right now, in terms of raw skill set, he's the best QB on the roster), but if the competition drives Jones or McGloin (For those unaware, Newsome is reportedly leaving the program. All the best to him.) to excel beyond the other two then so be it. Ultimately I'm "Team Penn State," and that's an attitude I hope we can all maintain during what looks to be a rocky and divisive offseason.

Until next time, we are!