As you can imagine, it’s a tumultuous time right now for the Penn State football program. The Nittany Lions are 0-3 for the first time since 2001 and they haven’t had a losing season since 2005. Right now, anything is in the cards for a Penn State team that is coaching and playing with little confidence.

Almost a month ago now, the Times News published my 2020 schedule breakdown and prediction where I boldly predicted that the Nittany Lions would go 8-0. I have been getting a lot of ‘did you have a typo in your column where you meant to put 0-8 instead of 8-0?’ emails, text messages, phone calls and neighborly ribbing on my block about my prediction, and deservingly so.

Before getting into today’s matchup with Nebraska, where I have been getting a slew of text messages from former Panther Valley standout basketball player J.C. Dietz - and when I say former, I mean ancient - who is thrilled that his Cornhuskers have a solid chance to win this week against a reeling Penn State team, let me give you my opinion on who is to blame for the Lions current struggles.

First and foremost, it all starts with the head coach, and James Franklin simply has not done a good job this season. Of course, there are some mitigating factors with the addition of a new offensive coordinator, offensive line coach, wide receiver coach and defensive line coach, all during a time where practice time wasn’t the best leading up to the season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The offense just hasn’t clicked in Kirk Ciarrocca’s new scheme, and some of that could be due to the lack of preparation time in putting in his system. Also, the loss of Micah Parsons, Journey Brown and Noah Cain has obviously taken its toll and in his weekly press conference, Franklin noted that his family being in Florida (COVID-19 concerns), while he is in State College has not been easy for him, which of course is expected and wouldn’t be easy on anyone.

But when it comes down to it, this is Coach Franklin’s seventh season in Happy Valley and every other team in the Big Ten has had to deal with injuries, practice time constraints and coaching turn over. The recipe just isn’t right, and if the season continues to go in this direction, there is no doubt changes need to be made.

I’m not saying Coach Franklin needs to go. In fact, I’ve been a constant supporter of Coach Franklin, because I believe he is a great role model for his players and preaches and teaches strong family values as well as sound social injustice principals and genuinely cares about his players’ academic success. You can plainly see, he honestly loves each and every one of his players, but in the end, you still have to win, and starting 0-3 with a team that I believe is still very talented is just inexcusable.

Since 2016, when the Nittany Lions started to turn the corner, it just seems that every season since, Penn State has a loss on the docket that it shouldn’t have, and in the end it has cost them a chance at the College Football Playoff (CFP). In 2016, it was a 42-39 loss to Pitt. In 2017, a 27-24 loss to an inferior Michigan State team and in 2018, yet another loss to a lesser-talented Michigan State team was one of the worst losses in Coach Franklin’s tenure. Last season’s loss to Minnesota hampered any efforts to qualify for the CFP, and this season a Week 1 loss to Indiana, in which the Nittany Lions dominated the ballgame in terms of total yardage, has sent them into their current downward spiral. Lastly, two one point losses to Ohio State in 2017 and 2018, where Penn State was leading by double digits in the fourth quarter certainly didn’t help matters.

This was supposed to be the season where the bad losses of the past started to go away and Coach Franklin, his staff and the players started to finish out the close games and defeat the inferior opponents. Obviously, the opposite has happened and the blame has to be put on Coach Franklin. What that means for the future of the Penn State football program, I don’t know?

Winless Penn State travels to winless Nebraska (Noon EST, FS1) this week and quite simply this matchup comes down to one thing. If the Nittany Lions can’t run the football, then they will be looking at starting the season 0-4. It’s extremely frustrating that Penn State’s veteran offensive line group hasn’t been better, and pair that with the retirement of Journey Brown (medical condition) and the season-ending injury to Noah Cain, and the Nittany Lions’ rushing offense has just been bad. They rank 93rd in the country, rushing for just 129.3 yards per game. Coach Ciarrocca’s offense is predicated upon running the ball effectively and then utilizing the run-pass option to keep teams off-balance. Penn State has had to go away from the run because they haven’t been successful early on, and also because they’ve been behind and second-year starting quarterback Sean Clifford hasn’t been good enough to carry the load. If the Nittany Lions are forced to be one-dimensional yet again, it will be another long day.

It’s still unknown who will be starting at quarterback for the Cornhuskers – either veteran Adrian Martinez or freshman Luke McCaffrey. There’s been a quarterback competition going on throughout the offseason and into the regular season, and head coach Scott Frost said whoever has the best week of practice will get the start this afternoon. The Nebraska offense hasn’t been overly impressive, averaging just 15 points per game this season, but it has been able to run the ball effectively, averaging 217 rushing yards per game.

The Penn State rush defense has been solid this season (124 yards per game), other than its performance against Ohio State. But one thing the defense needs to do is generate considerably more pressure from its front four. The Nittany Lions got zero pressure on Maryland quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa, and he threw for 282 yards and three touchdowns, gutting the Penn State defense. Neither of the Nebraska quarterbacks are heroes when it comes to throwing the football (189 passing yards per game), so if the Penn State defense can get pressure and do a decent job against the run, it could set them up with some nice field position on the offensive side of the football throughout the day.

I honestly have no idea what’s going to happen this afternoon. All of my predictions on how these games are going to go have been wrong, so I’m not even going to begin to try and guess what will and won’t happen. I’m just going to make a pick.

My pick is Penn State 27, Nebraska 24.