Penn State comes out of its bye week with no shortage of questions, and the first one gets answered Saturday afternoon at Beaver Stadium: can the Nittany Lions steady themselves against a Purdue team that suddenly looks dangerous?
The Boilermakers visit for a 4:15 p.m. ET Halloween kickoff, with Big Ten Network carrying the game live and B1G+ available for streaming. Fans can also follow along on the Penn State Sports Network with Steve Jones and Jack Ham on the call.
Oddsmakers like Penn State by 7.5 points, according to DraftKings, with the over-under set at 53.5. That number makes sense when you look at Purdue’s production in league play, where the Boilermakers are putting up 32.3 points per game.
The matchup comes back to Beaver Stadium after Penn State’s record-setting White Out loss to USC, and the atmosphere may not be quite as ferocious this time around. More than 3,700 tickets were still listed Monday on TicketMaster’s verified resale site, with some available for $12, roughly 25 percent of the list price. StubHub had seats starting at $9, while lower-level tickets near midfield were around $60.
That’s a different look from the last home crowd Penn State drew. The Nittany Lions packed in a record 114,419 against the Trojans, and they still rank second nationally in average attendance this season at 108,685, behind Michigan.
Penn State is also in a strange spot historically. It is one of only three Power 4 teams, along with Maryland and Michigan State, yet to beat a Power 4 opponent this season.
Maryland has already fired its head coach, Mike Locksley, while Penn State and Michigan State both have first-year coaches. Campbell was clear the bye week was not about looking past the present.
“To be honest with you, I’m a what’s-right-now kind of guy,” the head coach said. “Yes, we have a clear understanding that you have to have a global perspective, and in my seat, you have to have the 10,000-foot view of where the football program is.
But the reality of this is, we have to form an identity, and we have to form who we’re going to be. And the reality of this is, one of the great gifts that we are given, is we are getting hard, we are getting tough situations.
“I think we’ve grown a great deal in the last three weeks, and man, the resilience, the toughness, the character, the things that we want to embody so when we are at that point to be that kind of program, we can sink ourselves back into these moments and say, ‘Those scars, they gave us wisdom in these critical, tough moments as we grow ourselves forward.’”
That identity centers on quarterback Rocco Becht, and Campbell said during the bye that he has no plans to make a change at the position. Still, the backup situation has drawn attention. Redshirt freshman Alex Manske won the No. 2 job despite missing spring practice after open-heart surgery, and Penn State coaches have described him as the program’s future at quarterback.
The bigger question, then, is whether that future should be accelerated now.
Purdue, for its part, enters with momentum and some real firepower. The Boilermakers snapped a 19-game Big Ten losing streak with a road win over Illinois, then backed it up by rolling Minnesota 41-13 at Ross-Ade Stadium.
That’s the same Minnesota team that beat Michigan and had also taken down formerly No. 15 Iowa.
The offense has been the driving force. Purdue ranks third in Big Ten scoring in conference games at 32.3 points per game and sits among the league’s most productive passing attacks at 280.7 yards per game.
Ryan Browne has been the standout at quarterback. He’s completing 65.6 percent of his passes and owns a passer rating of 147.08, which tops Becht’s mark. He’s also cleaned up the turnovers, dropping from nine interceptions last season to three this year.
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.
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