The Anatomy of an Upset and How Penn State Pulls One Off vs. USC

It only took six games of his Penn State tenure, but Penn State head coach Matt Campbell is facing his very first must-win game as the man for the Nittany Lions. Now, Penn State's postseason hopes are out the window, but they need to find a win somehwere on their schedule.

Losing the first three Big Ten games would be disaster start for the Campbell era. So, with that in mind, how do they get the job done today?

The first thing that they have to do is limit the mistakes. The quickest way for the Penn State White Out crowd to get removed from the football game is to stack mistakes on top of each other. 

Penalties, extending drives on defense, suffocating drives on offense, and, most importantly, turnovers are going to swing the football game significantly one way or the other. On Saturday night, it is critical that the Nittany Lions limit their mistakes and force USC into them.

That's the place to start, and that is a very big-picture accomplishment. When they get into the weeds of the game, Penn State has to establish the run. In their two losses to Wisconsin and Northwestern, the run game was nonexistent. 

Against Wisconsin, they rushed for 119 yards on 3.3 yards per carry, and then last week against Northwestern, they rushed for just 48 yards on 22 carries. Obviously, they were in chase mode for the majority of the game, but that is unacceptable.

On the flip side, they have to control the line of scrimmage on defense. When their offense was rushing for 48 yards against Northwestern, the defense gave up 413 yards on 55 carries. 55 carries at 7.3 yards per carry is not going to be a recipe for success anywhere. Winning the line of scrimmage on both sides of the football is key.

The final ingredient is that the stars for Penn State are going to have to be stars. Who those guys are, we do not know because no one has really shown their face up to this point in the season. They will have to discover a star tonight against the Trojans. 

The last and final ingredient in the upset recipe is the play of the quarterback. Rocco Becht has got to figure it out, and figure it out quickly. He has been objectively bad over the last two games, and that simply has got to end. 

He needs to step up and lead the Nittany Lions to victory over the Trojans, simple as that.

It is going to be a tall mountain for the Nittany Lions to climb, but if they do these things, they will have a chance at the end of the game to get it done.