Pre Penn State (Week 3, 2013)

Week 2 gave UCF an opportunity to tweak its team against an injury-riddled and depleted FIU roster. On Friday, UCF’s offense started off looking a bit sluggish and once again, the play at the line of scrimmage was a bit lacking. On the offensive side, UCF’s O-line allowed FIU defensive linemen into the backfield twice in the first half though they seemed to get going just as the offense began to click. On defense, the D-line still failed to generate significant pressure against a depleted and inexperienced O-line. Those two facets of our team will be exactly what we’ll need in our first real test of the season against a formidable Penn State Nittany Lions squad.

Under center, Penn State has one of the premier young talents at QB in Christian Hackenberg. On defense, Penn State has arguably the best defense in the Big 10 conference; highlighted by the play of DT DaQuan Jones and LB Glenn Carson. Their rush defense yields a smaller average yards per carry than our own (1.8 vs 2.6). It is a bit concerning however when the leading tackler on the Penn State squad has the same number of sacks on his own as our entire defensive unit. Going into Happy Valley, we have to hope for the O-line to be able to slow down this fierce defense and allow Blake to stay clean long enough to make the play. Between Blake Bortles and Christian Hackenberg, Blake Bortles is looking like the better QB in the mix-up. He has thrown 4 TDs and 0 interceptions to Hackenberg’s 3 TDs and 3 interceptions. In the past, Blake has shown tendencies to try and force a play when there wasn’t one and that was where a large amount of his interceptions early last season came from, outside of the pocket usually throwing on the run. Since then, he’s developed and is smarter with the ball. He manages to spread the ball around to the multitude of receivers we have fairly evenly, yielding high yards per catch numbers which sharply contrast Penn State’s comparably lower YPC numbers.

 Looking at this matchup, this game is going to be decided at the line of scrimmage; if UCF can put pressure on the QB, it’ll make it easier for the secondary to take advantage of any mistakes. If our O-line manages to contain the pass rush long enough, our pass game can get going early, taking some pressure off of the rush attack and making it easier to run the balanced attack Coach O’Leary likes to employ. Our rush defense has been solid in our first two games, albeit against lackluster opponents, but they will be put to the test against a very solid, three headed dragon that is the Penn State rushing game featuring 3 RBs who each have over 100 yards on the ground coming into this game. Penn State, like our offense, utilizes a balanced offense and if our D-line doesn’t disrupt the flow of their gameplan, it will only mean trouble for the rest of the defense trying to defend the multitude of threats attacking them downfield as the game goes on.