No. 4 Penn State will look to improve its case for making the College Football Playoff when it visits Minnesota in a Big Ten encounter in Minneapolis on Saturday.
A competitive schedule might be preparing the Nittany Lions (9-1, 6-1 Big Ten) for the playoffs, but coach James Franklin remains focused solely on the Golden Gophers this week.
“As you know, I don’t love to talk about a whole lot more than Minnesota and the team that we’re playing this week,” Franklin said. “I’m totally focused, and I want our team to be totally focused on Minnesota.
“If I start talking about things other than Minnesota, then so do our coaches and so do the players, and we lose focus, and then we come out and don’t play well.”
Fair enough, but let’s look at where Penn State has been of late. The Nittany Lions answered a 20-13 setback to Ohio State on Nov. 2 with convincing victories over Washington and Purdue.
Drew Allar threw three touchdowns and tight end Tyler Warren had both a receiving and rushing score in Penn State’s 49-10 romp over the Boilermakers last Saturday.
Warren reeled in eight catches for 127 yards and rushed three times for 63 yards. His fourth career 100-yard receiving game tied Ted Kwalick (1966-68) for the school record among tight ends.
“Tyler Warren had a pretty high draft grade last year, came back, and I think it’s been a win-win,” Franklin said of Warren, who was named the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week for the second time this season.
“I think he’s going to be the first tight end drafted, is having a great year, is having a ton of fun with his teammates, and that’s what you want, right? You want it to be a great situation for everybody.”
Minnesota (6-4, 4-3) saw its four-game winning streak come to a halt with a 26-19 setback to Rutgers on Nov. 9. Former Golden Gophers quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis threw three touchdowns against his former team to lead the Scarlet Knights.
Luckily for Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck, the team had two weeks to rebound from that setback.
“Two bye weeks is really beneficial for a football team, mentally, physically and emotionally, for their health,” Fleck said. “Seasons are getting longer. I think our guys did a really good job of that. Not only that. We had to get better at the things we needed to get better at. Some self-scout. But it gave us a lot more time to work on Penn State as well and get a jump-start on that.
“I thought we had a really productive week of not only working on Penn State, working ahead, working on ourselves.”
Darius Taylor rushed for a touchdown in his fourth straight game but was held to just 28 yards on the ground.
Max Brosmer is completing 67.1 percent of his passes for 2,251 yards with 14 touchdowns and four interceptions.
–Field Level Media