Penn State wins, 45-3

After a sloppy start (which I wasn't able to watch, thank you Comcast), Penn State rolled Temple by a 42-point margin. Let's go over some initial thoughts on this win.

The Good: The defense really came through today with some big plays. Aaron Maybin and the D-line continues their stellar play, sacking TU several times. But not to be overlooked was the defensive backfield play, picking off a few passes near the goal line. Even though TU QB Adam DiMichele went down early, it was a great showing my the PSU defense. Navorro Bowman was a monster all day.

The Bad: I won't go so far to say the offense was bad. But when Temple shuts Penn State out in the first quarter, picks off a pass, and sacks the quarterback, that was definitely sub-par for PSU. There were also too many fumbles by PSU, even though only one or two were lost. Those mistakes can't happen against Illinois. But there were few things this week to complain about.

Overall: Joe Paterno was on the field for the first half, then proceeded to the press box to rest his leg. We can only wait and see with this. I'm not going to speculate what's going to happen, but this doesn't look very good. Penn State still looks like the best team in the Big Ten, and we'll all see if that's accurate next week in the conference opener. Good win. Not great, but good.

*Extra points: After watching my Big Ten Bloggers Pick'em standing fall with Iowa's one-point loss at Pitt, I tuned into the Purdue-CMU game. It was a fantastic game, with Central Michigan scoring a TD with about one minute left, then getting the 2pt conversion to go up by one. Then PU scored on a long TD run, got the 2pt. Leading 32-25, CMU was moving the ball down-field, only to see Dan Lefevour's pass intercepted. Nice win for the Boilers.