Penn State Football: Positional report card for win over Northwestern

Northwestern did a fine job of bottling up Saquon Barkley all day. Penn State’s offensive line problems also contributed to the low yardage totals for Barkley.

At halftime, Barkley had negative one yard rushing and later in the third quarter he had negative seven. But the Wildcats could only hold Barkley for so long. He scored a touchdown in the third quarter on a one yard leap into the endzone. Late in the same quarter, he broke out for a 53 yard run for his second score of the day. The Lions tried to get him another score later in the fourth quarter, but he dropped the low pass in the endzone from McSorley.

The surprising thing is Barkley only finished with 85 yards all-purpose on the day, behind DeAndre Thompkins. It’s certainly not going to take him out of the Heisman race, but it’s not one of his better performances. What he does against Michigan and Ohio State will probably determine his Heisman fate.

Penn State only finished with 95 rushing yards on the day. They have two weeks to improve the rushing attack before hosting Michigan.