Handing Out the Grades Following Penn State’s 30-13 Win over Illinois

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Penn State improved to 3-0 on the year with a 30-13 victory over Illinois on Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t always pretty but there isn’t any rule that says winning has to look pretty in order to count. A meeting with Iowa this upcoming weekend will be Penn State’s biggest test of the year, but this was a good primer on the road for what tougher defenses and grind-it-out games can feel like. Here are the grades. Not the best, but not the worst either.

Offense: C

Penn State did a few good things on offense and showed flashes of the general competency it had in the opening two weeks, but this group never really found its rhythm. Credit for putting the game away in the second half, but Illinois had turned the ball over so many times by that point and had been worn down that it felt more like a white flag than Penn State just finding a second gear. Drops, penalties and a struggling ground game all played into a lackluster performance on the offensive side of the ball. Nick Singleton was quietly Penn State’s leading receiver with three catches for 49 yards but the Nittany Lions really need more out of this wideout group on the road. KeAndre Lambert-Smith also had three catches on Saturday but wasn’t the dominant WR1 he wants to be. Drew Allar had his worst/least effective outing of the year but drops didn’t help his cause any here and his willingness to run with the ball helped Penn State on a few occasions. In many respects, Allar’s 16-for-33 afternoon looks worse than it looked on the field.

A perfect 5-for-5 red zone figure comes with a boatload of field goals and short fields that turned into three points instead of seven. Seven-for-18 on third down isn’t awful, especially when Penn State played Pribula-ball for a while in the second half. All told a 30-point output isn’t bad, but there were a lot of catches that should have been and points that didn’t happen. It’s a C effort and a C grade.

Defense: B+

What an odd game for this bunch too. Can’t knock a grade when a group forces / is the benefactor of five turnovers, but also there were enough warning signs that you wonder how things may have gone if Illinois would have simply stopped throwing the ball to the other team. The Illini finished the day with just over a two yards per carry average, but it felt worse than that at times. Three sacks helped, as did the five turnovers, but Illinois had so many self-inflicted wounds that you almost leave this game not being certain if this was all a product of Penn State making plays or Illinois just being awful at times. Probably a bit of both, but the grade gets a knock simply because you want to see more when things aren’t completely wonky.

Coziah Izzard gets a nod here for two TFL outing in his return and Penn State was more than happy to see him on the interior line. The Nittany Lions’ getting healthy on the interior might simply be the missing link for this group to turn the run game defense around. Then again, Illinois only finished with 62 yards on the ground, which feels somehow not right. End of the day you can’t get a bad grade if you’re on the right end of five turnovers. Just more to see to believe from this unit.

Special Teams: B+

Alex Felkins is giving Penn State some stability at kicker, even with his 52-yarder getting blocked. This group has work to do in all areas but this was the first game that felt like a step forward for special teams. Nick Singleton is proving to be a capable returner and Riley Thompson had a solid punting day with two of his six inside the 20 and a nearly 44-yard average. A block hurts this grade by default, but all things considered you can’t be too unhappy with how this unit played after the first two weeks coming out as a real mess at times. Penn State was going to need to lean on special teams to win this season and three made field goals certainly played a big part in this final score. Fair play to this bunch.

Coaching: B

This wasn’t a poorly coached game, but for all the dumb mistakes there’s an argument to be made that Illinois called a better offensive game at times. Why an offense does or doesn’t work at any given moment doesn’t usually come down to “just call the good plays,” but this wasn’t Mike Yurcich’s best work either. All told you can’t argue too much about a 30-13 margin in which the winning team always looked like the better team, but it also wasn’t anyone’s best effort either. Can’t look sexy all the time but if you’re the No. 7 team in the nation you can look like it too, at least sometimes. Saturday turned out to be a wild day in college football though, so maybe just getting the job done is good enough on the coaching front.

Overall: C

This grade isn’t low for any specific reason other than nobody left that game going “wow Penn State has it figured out.” It was a meh game at a meh time and got a meh effort, so it gets a meh grade. Wins are wins, but not all of them are nice to look at.