UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Trace McSorley’s objective, as always, is to go 1-0 this week.
That’s the mindset preached by Penn State coach James Franklin, and McSorley has embraced it as much as, if not more than, any of his teammates.
Tough to argue with the results, too, since Penn State enters its regular-season finale at Maryland Saturday at 3:30 p.m. with a 19-5 record in the nearly two seasons McSorley has been its starting quarterback.
And it’s not as if McSorley’s success is rooted in any exceptional physical assets.
He is listed as being 6-feet, 202 pounds — roughly the size of one of Ben Roethlisberger’s legs — and could pass for an equipment manager when he’s not in uniform.
“It’s not like he’s 6-4,” Franklin said. “It’s not like he runs a 4.3. Not like he can throw it 80 yards, any of those types of things.”
Rather, Franklin added, McSorley “does everything well” and has “worked really hard to refine and get better at his craft.”
His efforts have been rewarded. McSorley already has scrawled his signature in the Penn State record book several times — he owns records for everything from career touchdown passes [55] to consecutive games with a touchdown pass [26] — and is poised to reach several other milestones Saturday. A sampling:
• He needs nine passing yards to record the fourth 3,000-yard season in program history, and to become the first player to do it twice.
• If he passes for 210 yards, McSorley will join Christian Hackenberg and Zack Mills as Penn State’s only quarterbacks to throw for more than 7,000 in their careers.
• McSorley is five rushing yards short of joining Michael Robinson as the only Nittany Lions quarterbacks to gain 400 or more on the ground in a season. He also is one rushing touchdown shy of matching Robinson’s single-season record of 11 by a quarterback.
• His next completion will be the 231st of his career, tying Hackenberg for fifth place on the all-time list.
Some other numbers of note as Penn State prepares to close out the regular season:
• Despite allowing 27 or more points in three of the past four games, Penn State is tied with Auburn for the 8th-most stingy defense in FBS, allowing an average of 16.6 points per game. That’s down from an average of 25.4 in 2016.
• The Nittany Lions’ turnover margin of plus-12 ties Alabama and SMU for fifth-best in the nation.
• Penn State and Washington State are the only FBS teams with four players who have 40 or more receptions. The Nittany Lions who have done it are Saquon Barkley [46], Mike Gesicki [46], DaeSean Hamilton [43] and Juwan Johnson [42].
• Gesicki has at least one reception in 25 consecutive games.
• Kicker Tyler Davis has had a tough season on field-goal attempts, making just eight of 15, but has made all 130 extra points he has tried at Penn State and has 244 career points. That’s just two fewer than running back Lydell Mitchell, who is seventh on the school’s all-time list.
• Penn State has gotten a first down on first down 82 times this season, or 33.7 percent of its first-down plays.
• The Nittany Lions have trailed for just 37 minutes, 42 seconds of the 660 minutes they have played this season. Most of that came during a 27-24 loss at Michigan State Nov. 4. Penn State has held the lead for 1,534 of its 1,871 plays in 2017.
• Penn State is tied for fifth in FBS with 5.36 three-and-outs per game.
Dave Molinari: Dmolinari@Post-Gazette.com and Twitter @MolinariPG.
First Published: November 22, 2017, 6:29 p.m.