See if Ohio St., Michigan St. are Back on Top in Week 5 Big Ten Power Rankings
Saturday Blitz Big Ten Power Rankings Week 5
11. Penn State Nittany Lions, 4-1 (1-1), Lost to Minnesota Golden Gophers 29-6 Last Saturday
Penn State fooled us all. At 4-0, with a great quarterback and a great defense, there was plenty of reason to believe this actually was a good team. And there was no reason to believe that all of those close wins were due to those two factors and not an insane amount of luck. Well, we all missed the boat on that.
Northwestern came in and just clobbered the Nittany Lions in every fashion, forcing that luck to run out. Honestly, we’re being a bit unfair, though. With so many young players on the team and a new coach, something like this was bound to happen. What’s inexcusable, though, is that it happened against what is supposed to be a bad Northwestern team, and it makes this group look like a fluke because they barely beat UCF and Rutgers.
The future is still bright for this program and there is lots of young talent, but this was a bad loss that mostly woke the rest of us to reality about this team, at least for this year.