THAT FINAL PLAY OF PENN STATE/OHIO STATE, ILLUSTRATED

It’s important to say this at the top: The ability to know exactly what is happening on any given football play does not exist. There are 22 moving pieces. Some of them may be tired. Some of them may be hungry. Some of them may be thinking about a fight they had with a friend, or this thing they can’t do in a video game, or maybe a test they need to pass. Maybe they’re injured and trying to hide it, or terrified, or maybe not even mentally there at all.

Maybe they’re gassy. That would really throw us off, too. It’s impossible to think with a tropical depression making rotations in the lower latitudes. The number of huge moments in football directly influenced by stuttering bowel? Probably incalculable, if everyone were being honest.

It’s important to say that because sometimes the urge to pin a failure or success on one player is overwhelming and generally incorrect. Plays can fail for a thousand different reasons in 22 different variations. The math on that seems hard, and not always reducible to simple judgments.

That all said: Good lord, this is an absolute disaster. This is a disaster worthy of a Bosch painting. There are demons dancing with pitchforks around sinners with flowers growing out of their ears here. There are hellscapes, reader.

Just look at the offensive line and tell us they were told where to go, and fully understood their assignments. Look at them and tell us this, you would be telling us only the most grandiose of lies.

And they took two timeouts to get this! Not one, but two. This isn’t what happens when Penn State decided to take to the sideline to get things right once. This is what happened when they had two full timeouts to look at the Ohio State defense, really think about their best option, and then come back and put that on the field.

They did that, and lost. Words fail us, and ultimately so do the pictures.