Predictions: Will Penn State Bounce Back at Northwestern?

Penn State is playing Northwestern, and it’s time for us to give our predictions.

All three of these picks originally appeared on the latest episode of the Joe and the Fatman podcast. The answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Joe Smeltzer, Nittany Sports Now: Before the season, I said Penn State would lose to Wisconsin first, then beat Northwestern the next week. No reason not to stick to my guns. I think this is still a pretty good football team, not a great team, but a pretty good team. And it’s hard for me to see Penn State losing two in a row to teams that aren’t a Big Ten’s top competition. I think Penn State’s going to be motivated.

You have a quarterback that knows he played probably as badly as he’s going to play all year (against Wisconsin). I think Rocco (Becht) is going to be fired up, and I think there’s going to be a lot of motivation from last year. You know, you have guys that were close to James Franklin, were recruited by him, and they know that Northwestern was the team that got James Franklin fired. They didn’t purposely do it, but they beat Penn State, James Franklin lost his job, and you know, athletes are going to take that personally and use that as fuel, and that’s going to carry over. So I think Penn State, you know, knowing what it did wrong against Wisconsin, having the experience of Rocco Becht because that’s one of the things from, as we mentioned, Iowa State losing three, four games a year, you learn how to deal with it. You don’t get used to it because you know this wasn’t a bad program in Ames, but you learn how to deal with it. And I think Rocco and the head coach, offensive coordinator, everybody is going to use some of that experience to bounce back and get a win. I think Penn State’s in the back of their minds that they’d like to spoil Northwestern’s grand opening of their stadium, and I think that’s what they’re going to do.

I think it’s going to be close for the most part. Penn State’s going to have a lead late, and we’re going to be getting deja vu a little bit from last week. But I think this time Penn State closes the deal with the late touchdown. I’ll go with a 24 – 13 win that’s a little closer than that score indicates.

Kyle Golik, Nittany Sports Now: I said, much like during our preview show, that Penn State would lose to Northwestern, and I’m going to sound like Joe a lot here, and I’m going to stick to my guns. I think Penn State is going to lose to Northwestern. The first thing that alarmed me was listening to Matt Campbell try to fumble through his press conference and essentially say, ‘We got too conservative.’

That was maybe one of the more creative answers that I’ve heard in a long time. And to me, for a guy that preaches ownership, I don’t consider that a good ownership answer.

There are a lot of problems with this team right now. They can’t run the ball. They can’t stretch the field. They can’t finish on a pass rush, and now the defense, when it was pushed, broke. You know, special teams is doing pretty well, but that can only take you so far.  Northwestern has a very experienced quarterback, Aiden Childs, who had a really good game against Indiana. This guy is very seasoned. They have a three-headed monster at running back. They have a good receiver. They have a dangerous tight end.

Defensively, they have these two defenders, Braden Turner and Braydon Brus, extremely good tacklers. You know, this is a team that I think, David Braun. Okay, if we’re looking for the next Matt Campbell, the one that people talk about who coaches above his ability somewhere in college football purgatory, it’s David Braun, and I think he’s going to get a second win against Penn State. I’m gonna I’m gonna just go the inverse of you, Joe. Northwestern 24 and Penn State 13. I can’t imagine Penn State doing much better than it did last week against Wisconsin.

Andy Stine, Altoona Mirror: I guess I’m the tiebreaker here, right? If you had asked me last Thursday what I thought about this game, I would have given it a Penn State win. But two things kind of changed my mind. Number one was the fact that Penn State’s offense, especially their passing game, did look so, let’s face it, terrible last week. I thought, and I didn’t get to see the (Northwestern) game from Friday night, but I did hear that they gave Indiana a dogfight last week.

So, those two things kind of made me change my mind. I don’t think anyone’s going to be lighting up the scoreboard by any means, especially in Penn State’s case. Because right now, it’s still kind of hard to believe just how much they miss Koby Howard, and the fact that they are missing that, and the fact that another wide receiver hasn’t stepped up. I think it’s going to take a little bit more than a short week to fix it. So for that case, as I said, I don’t think anybody’s going to be lighting up the scoreboard, but I’m going to go Northwestern twenty, Penn State seventeen.