Penn State is 3-0 and coming off its bye week following an unblemished non-conference schedule at Beaver Stadium.
Now the real test begins.
After beating Nevada, FIU and Villanova by significantly wide margins, No. 3 Penn State begins conference play against No. 6 Oregon.
In the 2025 Penn State White Out, Penn State will open Big Ten play with one of the most important conference games of the season.
Following blowout wins, the road becomes more narrow for Penn State on its College Football Playoff journey.
As Penn State prepares for Saturday night’s matchup, coach James Franklin said the program could throw certain wrinkles into the game plan, but hasn’t intentionally held anything back this year.
“Are you saving things? I don’t know if saving is the idea, but you’ve done some offseason studies where there’s certain things you worked on during training camp that you’re planning on using against certain opponents,” Franklin said during his weekly presser Monday.
Franklin pointed to the mindset of offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki and defensive coordinator Jim Knowles preparing for those types of non-conference opponents.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.“There are some things you could have used early in the season but you didn’t feel like you needed to? Yeah. I think that’s always the case,” Franklin said. “But it’s not like offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators, and head coaches are going into a game saying, ‘we’re going to be conservative in this game.’ It’s not that.
“It’s all about the matchup and the opponent. It just depends on your lens.”
Penn State averages 437.3 total yards of offense and is tied for 13th in the country with 44 points per game. Oregon’s offense is top ten in points (50.8 – 7th), rushing yards (255.3 – 10th), and third-down percentage (58.1% – 10th). The Ducks are also 12th in total yards per game (523.8).
“There are packages and things that you’re going to see in the Oregon game that you didn’t see in the Villanova game,” Franklin said. “There were some things you probably saw in the Villanova game that you didn’t see in the FIU game or Nevada, so on and so forth.
Drew Allar threw for 226 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions against Oregon in the 2024 Big Ten Championship. The defense struggled, allowing 283 yards and four touchdowns through the air, plus 186 yards rushing.
“I guess the answer is, a little bit of both,” Franklin said. “It’s not because we’re taking the approach to be vanilla or conservative. It’s based on what you think you have to do in that game to be successful.”
Penn State will need to rely on two of the best coordinators in the country to put the Nittany Lions in position to win the showdown. Penn State has won six consecutive White Outs. A win would put Penn State in a great position to make the conference championship once again and compete for a high seeding in the College Football Playoffs.
