He's been working on it

Sporting News, The, Oct 25, 1993 by Tim Layden

In a corner of Penn State's elaborate multi-media room, a concrete bunker converted to a state-of-the-art inquisition area at the south end of Beaver Stadium, a senior linebacker named Eric Ravotti makes emotional promises: "This team is different," he says. Translation: We aren't going to quit. It's the buzzword of the autumn in Happy Valley. Different. Different conference. Different coach (in the same thick glasses and the same black shoes and white socks). Different team. Yet there they were, late Saturday afternoon, trying to attach words and music to a 21-13 loss to Michigan in front of the largest crowd in Penn State history, a passionate, Winnebago-driving, tailgating mass of 96,719. And for all of them, Penn State's first big game in the Big Ten fell with a sickening thud.

The Nittany Lions are 5-1 now, certain to free fall from the Top 10 and now in a desperate chase to play in their first Rose Bowl, an ambition Paterno admits to harboring, "when I'm alone, walking in the woods in back of my house." Most ominous of all, they have been in this position before, and not too long ago.

A year ago Penn State was 5-0 when Miami came to Beaver Stadium and beat the Nittany Lions, 17-14, a loss that was followed swiftly by the complete disintegration of Penn State's season. The Nittany Lions lost a week later to Boston College, a team that Paterno said "looked like a bunch of big, strong kids without much speed, and they had only beaten us once in 17 years." In all, Penn State lost five of its last seven games to finish at 7-5, a major disappointment that caused Paterno to examine his methods as seldom before in 28 years at Penn State.

"Where I went awry last year was that I assumed certain things would happen because they always did," Paterno says.

So he changed ... at age 66. Got more in touch with the kids. Got down on the field in practice and helped with the drill. Maybe being in the Big Ten helped, providing a new grail to chase. "There was more bounce in his step," Penn State Athletic Director Jim Tarman says. And Penn State again started 5-0, bringing that record, on a brilliant fall Saturday, to the Michigan game.

And on the game's most telling series, it was the old Joe who made the calls. On the last three plays of the third quarter and the first play of the fourth, Penn State was trailing, 14-10, and had four shots from the Michigan 1-yard line. When the series began, the nose of the ball was inches from the goal. When it finished, it was outside the one. Four downs, four running plays into the stomach of the Michigan defense.

Granted, the Big Ten is a man's league. And this entire game seemed to have been stamped from some midwestern mold, complete with Bo Schembechler's imprimatur. Penn State came to the assembly with good credentials: little creativity and devotion to the ground game. Woody Hayes would have approved.

On the first two plays of the series, Penn State ran what it calls in its playbook, "Quarterback Wedge," consecutive sneaks by quarterback Kerry Collins. No gain. Then two more plays into the center of the line, "43-iso," with running back Ki-Jana Carter. Stopped again. Deflated. "No," said Michigan nose tackle Tony Henderson, "We didn't expect them to run into the middle again (on fourth down)."

There is a precedent here. In the 1979 Sugar Bowl, Penn State had two cracks at Alabama from the 1. Two dives over the top, two times stopped. Alabama won the national championship, 14-7. But in the loss to Michigan last Saturday, even the Penn State players, customarily supportive to a fault, were baffled by the decision to run at the middle four consecutive times.

"Our job is to get under (the Michigan linemen)," guard Mike Malinoski said. "But they were just diving to the ground. It's pretty hard to get under them at that point."

Junior tackle Marco Rivera said, "(Michigan's linemen) were all bunched together in the gaps. We've got a play specifically designed for that situation, 40-pitch, which goes outside. Why we didn't use it, I have no idea." When Collins came back to the huddle with the fourth-down call, Rivera said, "We were all kind of pissed off. We should not have run that play in the first place. It didn't work three times, why call it again?"

There is some gray area. Paterno anticipated that Michigan would "loop" its linemen on fourth down, making it difficult to run outside. "If you run the sweep, and we were debating that, and they loop out, then you're in trouble," Paterno said. "I thought we would run right at them. It was my decision."

In fact, Michigan did loop. Not enough to make another smash-mouth dive feasible. Deja Joe.

Hey, Penn State had other chances. The Nittany Lions might have done well to tackle Tyrone Wheatley, who rushed for 192 yards on 32 carries, restoring his dim Heisman hopes. A brutal -- and obvious -- offside by senior defensive back Shelly Hammonds on a third-quarter field-goal attempt kept Michigan's go-ahead touchdown drive alive. And with a 10-0 lead with 5:14 to play in the first half, Penn State gave up a 48-yard touchdown on a punt return by Derrick Alexander.