I think the fever dream is almost over.
I think.
Penn State played its final game of the regular season on Saturday night. But Penn State also almost played its final game of the season on Saturday night.
In an almost disastrous, but somewhat fitting, end to the 2025 regular season, Penn State beat Rutgers, 40-36, as the fever dream of the 2025 season begins to wind down.
Or maybe it’s about to pick up?
I’m not really sure.
In fact, I’m not really sure what I just watched.
I know that Penn State ran all over the field in Piscataway. I know that Kaytron Allen became the first Penn State rusher to break 4,000 career yards with a 226-yard effort. I know that Nicholas Singleton broke several records, including the career touchdown record at Penn State.
But Penn State almost blew it against Rutgers.
This is the team that Penn State has historically owned for the better part of the last 30 years. This is the team that scored 36 points over the last six meetings between the two schools.
Still, Penn State’s defense on Saturday night allowed 36 points. Penn State’s defense gave up 338 passing yards and let Rutgers running back Antwan Raymond pick up 189 yards on the ground.
For much of the night – even from the first drive – Penn State played with fire in the form of the Rutgers offense. Missed tackles and missed coverage plagued the Nittany Lions all night long.
At one point, it looked like this season – which has been a living, breathing case in worst-case scenario – would add one more feather in that cap.
But then, as the Scarlet Knights drove down the field to effectively put the game on ice in the fourth quarter, Rutgers quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis just let the ball go. And not in the he-threw-it kind of way, he just kind of, sort of let it go.
It bounced around on the ground, and that’s when linebacker Amare Campbell picked it and ran it into the end zone for a 61-yard touchdown.
It was the play that both aided in ending and continuing the fever dream.
Penn State’s defense played so poorly that it barely deserved the win – and interim head coach Terry Smith said Penn State played “horribly” – yet it was Penn State’s defense that gave the Nittany Lions the win. Penn State’s offense played some of its best football of the season, meanwhile.
Yet somehow Penn State almost lost.
It’s unlikely that Penn State writ large will remember the final game of the 2025 regular season for years to come, yet it was almost a win for Rutgers that Scarlet Knights fans would have remembered for years to come.
But it all still fits squarely into the fever dream of this season. Nothing has ever been easy about this 2025 season. Nothing has ever been straightforward either.
Now, after the game that may have typified that sentiment, Penn State enters into the part of the fever dream that is never straightforward or easy, the final pages of the coaching search. Yes, there is the question of a bowl game — which Penn State appears to be interested in accepting. But that will be the secondary story over the coming weeks.
The coaching decision coming from the Bryce Jordan Center’s administrative offices and Old Main will be the last true part to close out this fever dream. How it all ends will be by far the dream’s most interesting part too.
Will Penn State go with a big fish? Will Penn State hire Terry Smith? Will Penn State get a name no one else has mentioned yet?
I don’t know. I’m not even going to bother to guess at this point. In fact, why would we even begin to guess when, back in August, we all thought this season was going to be extended deep in January?
2025 has truly been a season where left is right and up is down. It’s all been a bizarre haze of frustration and maybe some fun. Not much has made sense and not much will make sense — just in the way Penn State almost losing to Rutgers after playing its best football of the season over the two previous weeks did not make sense.
But the good news is that the fever dream is almost over.
I think.
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