Penn State Football: Recapping the Nittany Lions' Spring Game

New Penn State head coach Bill O'Brien is an offense-minded coach first and foremost, which means he's going to want to light up the scoreboard early and often in Beaver Stadium. So a 77-65 score in the spring game portends good things about the offense this year, yes?

Well, no.

Penn State's quarterbacks combined to complete just 23 of 48 passes and threw five interceptions against varying levels of defensive opposition, and the modified scoring system in use meant that the PSU defense took home the 2012 spring game victory. Strangely, the 23-48 performance is skewed by the bottom end of the depth chart; the three QBs fighting for the starting role were just 19-of-42 with all five interceptions.

As expected, Rob Bolden struggled the most of the three quarterbacks, going 7-of-14 with three interceptions and neither of the two touchdowns. One of the picks was on Bolden's historical bugaboo, the screen pass, where DT Jordan Hill blew the play up to make the interception. If Bolden still can't reliably complete a screen pass, he's not going to start. Period.

Paul Jones was decent at 6-of-15 and a team-high 113 yards, but he struggled with accuracy at times and threw a terrible interception to Devin Pryor on a blown read. Matt McGloin, who probably did as much as anybody to work his way into a starting role, went 6-of-13 for 105 yards for a score and a pick. Okay, so McGloin just did the least damage to his bid for the starting role. Progress!

There were bright spots on Saturday. The offensive line looked surprisingly solid, considering that four starting spots need to be replaced. Adam Gress, in particular, is a star-to-be at tackle, so the spring hype was legit. And Bill Belton looked like a stellar second back behind Silas Redd—check a highlight to the right.

On defense, to nobody's surprise, Glenn Carson led the team with eight tackles, including 1.5 tackles for a loss. Adrian Amos looked like he could start anywhere in the secondary, but he's probably set at safety out of necessity. Jordan Hill looks like PSU's next monster in the middle. There's a lot of talent here, if not depth.

Penn State's not "there" yet. It probably won't be a serious Big Ten title contender in 2012, not unless there's a major step forward by someone at quarterback. Matt McGloin, we're all looking at you. But this team should reliably expect to hit .500 in conference play, and 6-2 isn't totally out of the question. The potential is there.