Penn State-Maryland takeaways: What we learned and still don’t know about the Nittany Lions

Five takeaways from the Nittany Lions’ Big Ten opener

Penn State made a statement Friday.

What started as a “blackout” with a record crowd quickly turned into a mix of empty seats and fans clad in white, as the Nittany Lions crushed Maryland 59-0.

After rewatching the game, here are three things we learned and two things we still don’t know about the Nittany Lions.

What we learned:

Good things happen when KJ Hamler gets his touches

This is something that we’ve known for a while now, but Friday offered a reminder as to why Penn State needs to make it a priority to get KJ Hamler in space as much as possible.

For all of the blue-chip recruits on the roster, no one possesses the kind of game-changing ability that Hamler does.

Take the 58-yard touchdown, for example, which was a pretty simple slant route that would have given the Nittany Lions a first down on third-and-9. Hamler evaded one tackler, broke free and embarrassed a defender on his way to the end zone.

Hamler is averaging a ridiculous 21.7 yards per touch. He recorded a career-high six receptions Friday, which is probably the sweet spot in terms of touches because his body isn’t built to take shot after shot across the middle.

“I think the more times KJ can touch the ball, we’re going to like what happens,” James Franklin said after the game Friday. “That doesn’t have to always be shots down the field… We all know he’s a difference-maker. So I think that was probably the biggest difference with this game from the three previous.”

Sean Clifford looks comfortable — both on the road and on the ground

Any doubts of how Penn State’s young team would handle a difficult road atmosphere were erased within a couple minutes Friday.

Sean Clifford, in particular, was phenomenal. In his first collegiate road start, Clifford was 26 of 31 for 398 yards and three touchdowns.

The lone mistake was a slightly under-thrown deep shot down the sideline to Daniel George that Maryland safety Nick Cross sniffed out and intercepted, but Penn State scored on each of the other six possessions that Clifford was in the game for.

And while on the road against Maryland and on the road against Ohio State, Iowa or Michigan State are two very different things, there’s still a lot to be excited about.

Clifford added another touchdown on the ground and rushed for a team-leading 54 yards. His reads still need some work but he made the right one here and the execution was perfect.

Friday felt vaguely like the second half of the Minnesota game in 2016 when Joe Moorhead opened up the playbook and Trace McSorley seemingly started to trust his abilities running the ball.

Extra emphasis on the word “vaguely,” because Clifford is never going to run as often as McSorley did and the game scripts of Friday’s contest and the one in 2016 — a come-from-behind overtime victory that completely altered the trajectory of the Penn State program — couldn’t have been more different.

But, Penn State’s film is now loaded with examples of Clifford making things happen with his feet, and when defenses have to account for a mobile quarterback, things like this happen:

This, for the record, is maybe my favorite play from Clifford so far this season.

The depth of the front 7 is ridiculous

Penn State has a legitimate two or three-deep at all four spots on the defensive line.

Maryland native Shane Simmons is finally healthy and playing a role, and Adisa Isaac is going to be a problem for opposing offensive lines in the future.

The first team d-line has struggled to bring down the quarterback over the past couple weeks, but I’m not too worried because the pressure still appears to be there, and the d-line has completely shut down each team’s running game each week. Opposing offenses are averaging just 68.0 rushing yards per game, which puts Penn State at No. 6 in the country in rushing defense.

As for the linebackers, Jesse Luketa and Ellis Brooks didn’t miss a beat in place of Micah Parsons after Parsons was ejected for targeting. Brooks and Luketa finished first and tied for second in tackles, with Brooks recording 2.5 sacks.

“We have a bunch of guys that can play and they showed that they can play [Friday],” Jan Johnson said. “Even all the way down to Charlie [Katshir] and Brandon Smith getting into the game at the end, they did awesome.”

What we still don’t know:

We’re no closer to figuring out how the running back rotation will shake out

Listen, a four-running back rotation is far from ideal.

But if you’re Ja’Juan Seider, I don’t know how you tell any of these kids that they don’t deserve to play.

Carries were split pretty evenly — Ricky Slade had 8, Devyn Ford and Noah Cain had 7 each and Journey Brown had 5 — and the pass protection was improved from the Pitt game.

In a perfect world, somebody takes the job and runs with it. But even if that occurs, all four ball carriers are showing that they’ve earned some sort of role.

Is the offense for real, or is Maryland just that bad?

I’m personally buying stock in Penn State’s offense after that performance, but it’s fair to question the validity of it given just how bad Maryland looked.

With that said, I thought Ricky Rahne called his best game as an offensive coordinator.

Receivers were open in the flats or on short routes across the middle all night long, and the Nittany Lions’ ability to consistently gain yards on short and medium attempts opened up things downfield.

Penn State went 9 for 13 on third down, averaged 14.5 yards per completion, out gained the Terps 619-128 and the offensive line didn’t allow a single sack against a Maryland defense that averaged 4.33 per game entering the contest.

We saw a few two-back looks, and I was particularly interested by this one, where Ricky Slade and Noah Cain both stayed back to block and Clifford launched a 40-yard completion to Dan Chisena.

Kirk Herbstreit had this to say on College Gameday Saturday morning: “You can say Maryland is not a great team, I don’t care. On the road on a Friday night, Penn State is a team to remember in the Big Ten East.”