Penn State Football: 5 players who earned game balls vs. Northwestern

As Penn State football prepares to takes it easy in its bye week following a victory over Northwestern let’s look back on the team’s top performers of Week 6.

Penn State is undefeated at the season’s halfway point.

Let’s just enjoy that for a minute.

Currently pairing the 12th-best defense in the entire nation with one of the school’s highest powered offenses to date, Penn State has laid waste to any team that dared to get in its way and the games haven’t even been close.

One of the games that wasn’t close was the Nittany Lions’ Week 6 trip to Evanston, Ill., to face off against the Northwestern Wildcats.

While Northwestern has struggled to find consistency in 2017, with their best player, Justin Jackson being hampered by injuries, it has played Penn State tough over the past few years, and many fans feared that this game could trap the Nittany Lions, and ruin their College Football Playoff aspirations before they even faced off against a ranked opponent.

But thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

Even after losing the last two games of the series, Penn State marched into Ryan Field and punished the Wildcats without hesitation.

And they did it without a run game for much of the afternoon.

The Nittany Lions faced off against a stacked box for much of the game, but no matter what head coach Pat Fitzgerald threw at them, James Franklin’s squad rallied together and found its way into the end zone, which is all that matters.

As the team now takes a week off to prepare for the second half of the season, here are five players who went above and beyond in the Nittany Lions’ Week 6 trouncing of Northwestern, and deserve game balls for their efforts.