Blue-White Insights

I was unable to attend the game, however, I streamed it from the Big Ten Network's website. All in all, the coverage was pretty good and if you were thinking about tuning in for the time delayed broadcast on Monday night I definitely would.

The crowd was huge and as fired up as ever!







I'll start with the offense. Stepfon Green is a viable home run threat. Stepf took his first carry to the house. He looks to be the fastest player on the team and has the kind of breakaway speed that PSU has been missing for several years. However, this is not to say that he looked ready to start right away. Green seemed to dance in the hole instead of hitting it full speed and while he has excellent speed he lacks consistency because he is always looking to break a big run. That being said, you can't coach speed. The coaches will work with him on patience and commitment to the hole and, if he can master those two things, watch out. Do not make a mistake, Greene has nothing if not hot, nasty speed. His speed is best illustrated not only by the speed lines clearly coming off of him in the photo to the left but also in the following chart courtesy of the Juleser:









Royster looked fine and will probably be "the guy" in 2008. However, Brandon Beachum looked like he could start right away as well. Beachum looked a lot like Tony Hunt. He is probably the most powerful RB in the stable already and showed that he was fast but doesn't seem to have the break-away speed to make him an elite player.

Both quarterbacks made me fell better about 2008. It seems that either would be ready to play in 2008. Similarly, both will have a lot of fire power to work with; think about having Royster, Green, Williams, Butler, and Norwood on the field at the same time. That is a lot of speed to cover up.

Andrew Sczerba had the kind of game that made you say: Quarless-Who? Sczerba proved that while he may not have break away speed he will give you a huge target who WILL CATCH THE BALL!

As for the "Spread HD" offense we didn't see it. At least I don't think we saw it. I only saw one option play. However, after seeing how much speed PSU can put on the field I'm really fired up to see what the offense will look like.

The Defense looked, well, ok I suppose. It looked like both Hull and Colasanti got some PT in the middle LB position. However, the effectiveness of the LBs is limited in these kinds of games as there is no blitzing. The Defensive line has some genuine talent. Both the Blue and the White squads showed that they can play. This is critical as LJSR loves to keep an 8 man rotation to keep everybody strong. Knowing that you have such a talented stable of guys on the line will really pay off in the fall.

The game was great. 73,000 in the stands, fight songs blaring, the crowd going crazy! It was a wonderful atmosphere.

Check out BSD's post as he actually went, lucky SOB. Ruts also has a bevy of great links so get over there. If you wanna see some highlights head over to wjactv.com

And now I make fun of a random girl at the game:

















I swiped and altered all of these photos from Sportspage.com