Penn State Leader Anthony Donkoh Contrasts Last Year to This Year After Tough Loss

One of the leaders of the Penn State team is offensive lineman Anthony Donkoh. Donkoh is the top player on the Nittany Lions' offensive line and is one of the better linemen in the country.

He is one of the unquestioned leaders of this team, and he spoke about the contrast between last year's team and this year's team after the loss. 

Rewind to a year ago, Dan Lanning's Oregon Ducks came to town and beat the Nittany Lions in double overtime, which was the beginning of the end. 

This year, in very similar fashion,  the Nittany Lions fell hard to the Wisconsin Badgers, but according to Donkoh, the approach to response has been totally different, but so good for the Nittany Lions going forward.

He referenced the fact that even though last year's team was close, this year's is much closer. Not only that, but the Nittany Lions hit the panic button after last year's Oregon loss last year; this year, they have approached it more calmly, still with great urgency to get it all corrected.

While all of that is fine and good, the reality is that the two losses couldn't be more different. Last year's Oregon loss was basically a coin flip, and it was a battle between two top-five teams in the country.

This year's loss was to a struggling team that they were much better than, and they were heavy favorites against. Not only that, they had a 17-point lead to start the game and blew it all. 

Saturday was an unmitigated disaster, but it is over, and the Nittany Lions simply cannot dwell on it any longer. On the other side of that loss is a nasty Northwestern team that is trying to take that step up in weight class. 

They almost got the job done last week against Indiana but came up short. They are going to be nasty this week, and they are going to be coming for blood.

Penn State truly hasn't shown anything to this point in the season that they would be able to handle a team with this type of mindset.

Matt Campbell needs this one; he really does. It would be a total disaster for him to go 0-2 in his first two Big Ten games against Wisconsin and Northwestern. 

Penn State is poised for a battle on Friday night and they better come ready to roll. They believe that they have handled the adversity much better but was it good enough? We will know in just a couple of days.