Tyler Warren came alive, gaining 64 yards between an acrobatic catch and a direct-snap rush. Penn State only needed three yards to tie the game in the fourth quarter. Despite four chances, the Nittany Lions fell short at the goal line without Warren touching the ball again.
The opportunity was there, but the execution wasn’t in a 20-13 loss to Ohio State on Saturday.
“Obviously, you’re supposed to score touchdowns when you’re at the three-yard line,” Warren said. “So, I mean, that’s on us as an offense. I think everybody on the offense will agree with me when I say that. We know we gotta work on that and get better at it. That was a big part of the game.”
James Franklin hired offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki almost exclusively for games and opportunities like these. But when it mattered most, Kotelnicki, deemed one of the nation’s most creative offensive minds, got away from his quirky system.
Kotelnicki called three consecutive rushes for running back Kaytron Allen and a flawed fourth-down pass play that ultimately went to tight end Khalil Dinkins. The question remains: after two explosive plays from Warren, why was he not given a chance to find the end zone on the final offensive series?
“We gave the ball to the running back, I think three times, threw the ball on the last one,” Franklin said. “Should we probably have given the ball to Tyler Warren after the plays he made? Yeah, I get the question. I get it.”
Dinkins wasn’t the intended target when the play was called prior to the fourth-down incompletion, quarterback Drew Allar said. With one yard to gain for a tie game, Allar had his sights set on Warren, who was covered tightly in the flat, causing Allar to throw toward Dinkins, who was triple teamed by the Buckeyes.
“I mean, it was basically just a pass, we wanted to get it to Ty Warren. The safety or nickel did a good job of playing over the top of it and driving it,” Allar said. “It would have been a bang, bang play short of the goal line or incomplete. Then I was looking at Dink, and we just didn’t connect on it.”
The final attempt at the end zone was one thing, but to feed the ball three times to Allen, who had struggled alongside fellow running back Nick Singleton, was a puzzling decision. Warren, a tight end, was the team’s leading rusher on Saturday, despite only taking three carries. The play calling and execution simply was not there from the Nittany Lions.
“There were some drives, we were right there, goal-line, in the red zone, where we can obviously put points on the board,” Singleton said. “But just mistakes, penalties and all that, we gotta figure it out.”
The officiating was, to say the least, questionable. With that being said, Penn State beat itself more than enough times, whether on pointless penalties or on botched attempts in or near the goal line.
Harrison Wallace III made a fantastic catch to bring the Nittany Lions to the three-yard line with 16 seconds left in the first half. With one timeout remaining, Penn State appeared to be in good position to score at least a field goal or take the lead entering the break. That was when Allar threw again to Wallace, who nearly made a difficult catch, but dropped it, somehow leaving the ball in the hands of Ohio State’s Davison Igbinosun for an interception.
There were chances, and there were also costly flags that shattered the momentum Franklin’s team had earned in its first two drives of the first quarter. Most notably, there was a third-down offsides call on Abdul Carter at the start of the second quarter and, that same drive, an unsportsmanlike penalty on Elliot Washington II after making a stop on another third down.
That drive resulted in the touchdown that gave the Buckeyes the lead.
“Jumping offsides in an obvious third-down situation, extended a drive for them. A tackle and standing over a guy on a sportsmanlike-conduct penalty on a third-down stop extends a drive,” Franklin said. “Can’t do that. Can’t do those things. Happened last week, happened again this week. That’s on me. We got to be a disciplined football team. We were not disciplined at times today.”
Those were the avoidable calls. The Nittany Lions couldn’t control a fourth-quarter fumble recovery that was overturned and ruled an incomplete pass without conclusive evidence. Franklin roared at officials after halftime and made it clear he did not agree with the overturned fumble recovery that would’ve put his team in position to score late in the game.
“There were a ton of 50-50 calls in this game that you could call it either direction. Was a ton of them in this game,” Franklin said. “The fumble on the sideline in the near arm that goes out at the two-yard line, obviously, and it’s called a touchdown [on the field; it was ultimately ruled a touchback]. There’s a ton of calls, 50-50 calls, that could go either way. In that type of game, they’re critical. They’re critical.”
