Beaver Stadium is quiet heading into the holidays, but it will be all exciting when all these Penn State fans head down to the Cotton Bowl. Penn State's offense ranked 22nd in the country. They had their moments with explosive plays, but they weren't really consistent. That is something they can work on going into Texas and going into next season.
"Obviously, we're a young team, but we talked all off-season about how that's not going to be a problem for us," Penn State sophomore quarterback Sean Clifford said. "I don't think it was, but I think that overall, we grew a lot throughout the year and it think this is going to be a big test having a first time coordinator who's going to be calling the plays. I think there's a lot of things we can grow on and learn from in this game."
"I would say we progressed just all around, just running the ball, passing the ball, just our confidence in doing those things," Penn State junior running back Journey Brown added. "We want us to be more consistent across the board going into the second half and we've done a good job kind of maintaining that, but I feel like we can do better. There's always points and stuff you can do better."
"I think we took a lot of lulls this year on the offensive side of the ball when we got up early or something like that and we just can't do that," Penn State sophomore tight end PAt Freiermuth said. "I think we did improve as an offense from my freshman year to sophomore year. So I think we need to continue to improve. Probably just execution, just paying attention to detail. We definitely just didn't in certain times in games kind of take those lulls like you guys saw and I think it was just a combination of we just got up so fast that we kind of took a step back off the gas pedal."
Freiemuth announced recently he will return for his junior season next year instead of entering the NFL Draft.
"The biggest decision for me was I really wasn't planning on going. I knew I was going to stay, but when I kind of was told I have to live by myself in whatever city I am, I was like, 'Whoa, I'm not ready for that.' So, I just want to stay in college and be with my boys and probably why I made this decision."
Penn State plays Memphis in the Cotton Bowl on December 28.