Examining Penn State football’s pivotal 2023 season tests
The summer has just started and the recruiting camp season is in full swing for Penn State football. That has in no way prevented the Nittany Lions from looking ahead to their 2023 campaign, though.
And James Franklin, the eternal king of keeping what’s immediately in front of the program at the forefront, has even acknowledged as much.
Franklin has kept with his offseason tradition of beginning preparations for the first game of the season – in this case, West Virginia on Sept. 2 at Beaver Stadium to open the slate. That tradition also involves a deep dive on the first four opponents, which also include Delaware, Illinois, and Iowa.
But, in joining On3’s J.D. PicKell for The Hard Count recently, Franklin allowed for the reality that two other programs will also get a preseason jump-start scout from his coaching staff and a small army of analysts.
“West Virginia, West Virginia, West Virginia, West Virginia, West Virginia. This is who we open with,” Franklin said. “But I’ll be honest, I won’t give you a total coach speak here, we are getting ready for West Virginia and we have done our first four opponents. We’ve just finished those breakdowns.”
Franklin continued.
“But then we will get a head start on Michigan and we will get a head start on Ohio State,” Franklin said. “We understand the importance of those two games, specifically on our side of the conference. I think we’re anywhere, in most publications, (ranked) five or six in the country preseason. The challenge is, Michigan and Ohio State, I think, are two and three or two and four.”
Given that context, here are the four games that are most likely to dictate the successes or setbacks of Penn State’s 2023 season. Because one crossroads can directly impact the next, they’re presented in chronological order.
Sept. 2 – Penn State vs. West Virginia
7:30 p.m. – Beaver Stadium – NBC
This isn’t a list of Penn State’s toughest games on the schedule. Rather, this is a list of the most pivotal games.
And, for a Nittany Lion team breaking in a new quarterback, with the inevitable kinks to work out at the start of a new season, no game will be more important than the first one, in every sense.
Certainly, West Virginia enters the season facing something of a mountain to climb coming off a 5-7 season last year and a 6-7 campaign the year prior. But, in a year the Mountaineers need to turn it around if Neal Brown is going to keep his job, they’ll be motivated to come out firing on all cylinders at the home of a traditional rival in a nationally televised night game.
On paper, this is a game Penn State should win. Ensuring that it ends the night doing so is critical to its hopes for the 2023 season. Bonus points for doing it convincingly.
Sept. 16 – Penn State at Illinois
Noon – Memorial Stadium – FOX
Penn State fans haven’t forgotten the Illini coming into Beaver Stadium and knocking off a 5-1 Nittany Lion team in nine overtimes in 2021. In all likelihood, Penn State as a football program hasn’t forgotten it, either.
Avenging that clunker of a game will demand doing so on the road against an Illinois program that has taken unmistakable strides in its first two seasons with Bret Bielema.
After a hot start last season, starting 7-1 with wins over Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska in the west division, the wheels fell off with a three-game slide that included a dagger 31-24 loss to Purdue in November.
Illinois sustained critical losses in its outstanding secondary and leading rusher Chase Brown is gone. But, optimism is strong in Champaign that talent is ready to step up in the vacancies from last season with a good chance to again contend for a Big Ten title game berth.
For two programs likely to be 2-0 heading into their first Big Ten games of the season, with an 11 a.m. local start and a national audience, this matchup might not jump off the page as a serious test for the Nittany Lions, but it should.
Oct. 21 – Penn State at Ohio State
Noon (probably) – Ohio Stadium – FOX (probably)
Make no mistake two other tests are in the interim. Iowa at Beaver Stadium for a 7:30 p.m. kick and at Northwestern the following week, both represent important challenges for Penn State on the schedule immediately following that trip to Illinois.
But really, this is the game that is circled at Penn State every season, and with good reason.
Even after back-to-back Big Ten titles for Michigan, the Buckeyes remain the opponent that Penn State has played tantalizingly close against, but the results simply haven’t been there. The streak is now six losses to Ohio State dating back to the Nittany Lions’ stunning 24-21 upset in 2016. And another four-game losing streak preceded that.
For Penn State to get to where it wants to go as a program and to reach the pinnacle of college football both in the Big Ten and nationally, those trends have to break more favorably toward the Nittany Lions. And while a loss won’t necessarily derail progress if Penn State can take care of its other games on the schedule before and after it, a win, in one of the harshest environments in the league, would go a long way to those ends.
Nov. 11 – Penn State vs. Michigan
Noon – Beaver Stadium – FOX
The Wolverines didn’t lose a game last season until their heavyweight College Football Playoff semifinal showdown with TCU. And, they don’t appear likely to diverge from that path heading into the 2023 season.
The highest previous ESPN FPI opponent on Michigan’s schedule is at Michigan State (No. 31) on Oct. 21. All of which is to say, there is an excellent chance that Michigan will travel to Happy Valley an unbeaten 9-0 heading into its matchup with the Nittany Lions.
If Penn State can pass its prior tests, or limit its losses to a setback at Ohio State, a CFP berth could very much still be in play for the Nittany Lions with a win against the Wolverines. In a hypothetical of this pitting two unbeaten teams against each other, a win also more or less guarantees a trip to Indianapolis for Penn State, where a loss wouldn’t necessarily eliminate that CFP possibility.
Regardless, after a thrashing in Ann Arbor last season for a previously unblemished Penn State program, this is a game of critical importance to the Nittany Lions toward their 2023 goals.
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