As we all know, in the Harbaugh era, road games against opponent that have some manner of standing in one of the major polls - Penn State was 23rd in the AP rankings - have not generally gone all that well, and indeed, for a time yesterday, it seemed as if this one would also not go well. 

Here we are, however, victorious, and looking towards Maryland with perhaps the most stressful 9-1 team in the Power 5 at the moment. How do we know that we experienced stress yesterday? Well, it's quite simple. I will show you some of it, as always. If nothing else, we are not afraid to throw our unideal moments right back in faces around here, eh?

Let me start by congratulating everyone on an obscure but significant feat - breaking the 3,000 post plateau in the open thread. Sure, we've done this before, but not for a good long time, so that was actually nice to see everyone quite engaged and in tune with what was going on, or indeed, in reading some of your replies in the thread, what you earnestly believed to be going on even though it certainly was not going on. 

In terms of the data overall, this one actually had a fair number of similarities to the Nebraska thread, although as we are deeper into the season and the stakes are ever increasing, our reactions were more visceral and pointed, especially when we coughed up the lead and it began to look as if we might not get it back for a few minutes. We managed 285 fucks given in the thread, which is comparable to the 299 given during the Nebraska game. Similarly, we gave 122 shits, which is similar to the Nebraska game as well. Here's what that looks like graphically:

Especially with "fuck", it's beginning to look like almost every season save for last years, which was strange because of COVID restrictions. The non-conference schedule is mostly quiet, then about 2-3 games into the conference schedule, a spike, then MSU, then a dip, then a PSU-like game, then of course, Ohio State and the board descending into fuckery. 

"Fire" is perhaps more significant this week - we had 94 instances of "fire", which is a season high, just edging out the 87 instances in the MSU thread. It's natural for us to want more heads and want more jobs after a rivalry loss, but the yesterday's game really was the sort of game we would, in the more recent past, end up losing, and this time, we walk away with a win. Slowly but surely, we seem to be doing things that have eluded us recently. Still, the "fire" mentions in the second half were....well, that's where most of the 94 appeared. "Suck" hit a season high as well, although we haven't used this one nearly as much this year as in the past, when we would have "suck" at "shit" levels, if you will. Anyway, here they are:

It would be fair to say that in a game that made everyone shake fists and gnash teeth, we worried a bit about defense and offense. Indeed, we worried about them yesterday more than we did during the MSU game actually. I mean, that stands to reason - we weren't exactly ablaze yesterday, but then this is difficult to do sometimes in mid-November with sleet / snow flying about the place. 

The story remains in the dame on this front - we worried most about the offense in the Washington game, where as you recall, we threw it barely at all, and the most about the defense in the Nebraska game, where it seemed like we were napping a bit on that side of the ball. Yesterday, however, we fretted about both sides almost as much. 

As for the "Cade" and "Harbaugh" metrics, well...

We reached a season high for "Harbaugh" mentions, and this was tied to a lot of the "fire" mentions as you would expect. That illustrates a funny thing about different types of fans - some wait until the end to reserve judgment, others live strictly in the moment. It was very likely the people living in the moment calling for Harbaugh's head, but that was a voice that was definitely there. 

With the exception of Indiana, we've seen "Cade" mentions sit at elevated levels since Rutgers, peaking at Wisconsin, which we seemed to view as a coming out party of sorts in retrospect, mainly because he did, in fact, throw the ball quite a bit. Of course, everyone knew that Wisconsin was going to take away the run - run offense and indeed run defense are their raison d'etre. This is simply what they do. We overcame it handily, as you will recall. 

Normalized values for "fuck", "shit", "fire" and "Harbaugh" look like this right now:

It terms of their frequency against the running average, these words are slowly beginning to achieve an interesting synergy, with "fire" and "Harbaugh" almost matching pace yesterday, as I sort of mentioned earlier. "Shit" actually ends up with higher value than "fuck" when you view it this way, and that's probably just as well, for we did play like it, especially on offense in the first quarter, where we managed all of six plays. 

What does overall efficiency look like? Same as it has much of the season:

It has been fairly steady. Like I said last week, we walked into 2021 half-expecting problems and while many of us have, I am sure, been pleasantly surprised in some respects, we remain on guad. That's what you are seeing here. 

Yesterday, there were 3,055 posts as of the end of regulation and 1,347 instances of tracked words, which is the 2.27 number. I guess if we don't want to use "agitated" as I have in the past, we can say "nervous". We've been that all season, even in wins. Really, through much of the Harbaugh era to date, we've been "nervous" like this, even in the better seasons. 

So now, we look at Maryland and a shot at being 10-1 walking into The Game after that, which most of us never saw in August, although this is fandom and some of us will also take credit for takes we never stated, or indeed are the opposite of the one we did. That's just what fans do.