COLUMBUS, Ohio -- With tears welling up and his eye black smudged all over his face, Penn State quarterback Drew Allar solemnly did his best Saturday to digest it all after Ohio State did what it seemingly always does to the Nittany Lions.
The misery of losing to the Buckeyes for the 11th time in their past 12 meetings was only compounded by Penn State having gone belly-up offensively, wasting a staunch defensive performance in a 20-12 loss at Ohio Stadium.
"Sucked," Allar said when asked about his performance.
The sophomore quarterback, who grew up in Medina, Ohio, composed himself, but he didn't hold back. At least seven times, he used the word "suck" to describe the pain of the loss and a woeful offensive performance in which he was constantly under duress and finished 18-of-42 for 191 yards -- including 73 yards on a meaningless drive in the final minutes.
Penn State was just 1-of-16 on third down. Allar was sacked four times, and the Nittany Lions were held to 49 rushing yards. Their talented running back duo of Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen combined for just 18 carries.
"It sucks to lose like this, especially on the road to a very good team," said Allar, who has not thrown for more than 208 yards since Week 1. "Lotta emotions in the locker room and with good reason. Nobody wants to feel this way. We put countless hours of hard work in, and it sucks to have a result like this. You have to wash it and learn from it, because if we don't learn from it, we're just fooling ourselves."
Penn State (6-1, 3-1 in the Big Ten) hadn't been tested in its first six games, and there wasn't much need for Allar to have to throw the football. But Ohio State's swarming defense came after him from the outset, and the Nittany Lions never had any answers.
Penn State coach James Franklin and Allar's teammates said he was being too hard on himself, and Franklin even acknowledged that he felt like the Nittany Lions could have run the ball a little more.
"I think all year long, we've called the game and managed the game to put [Allar] in the best situation to be successful, and we weren't able to do that today for a number of reasons, but we will look at it," Franklin said.
Penn State offensive tackle Olumuyiwa Fashanu, a projected NFL first-round draft pick, said Allar had plenty of company when it came to the offense being stopped in its tracks.
"That's the kind of young leader you want at quarterback," Fashanu said. "From my perspective, I can only talk about the way I played, and I don't feel that I performed to the best of my abilities. There were definitely a good amount of plays where I should have done a better job in protecting Drew, whether it be for a half-second or a second longer. It's on all of us."
Since beating Ohio State in 2011, Penn State is 0-6 in Columbus and 1-11 overall against the Buckeyes. Franklin's only win over the Buckeyes came in 2016 in Happy Valley. Franklin is now 3-16 against AP top-10 opponents (0-10 on the road) at Penn State, and he's 13-23 against AP top-25 opponents.
But he was in no mood to look at the bigger picture Saturday or what Penn State's struggles against Ohio State say or don't say about the trajectory of his program in Year 10 under his leadership.
In fact, Franklin opened his postgame news conference by saying, "I'm not sure if we didn't just watch two of the best teams in college football, obviously specifically on the defensive side of the ball."
But it's the offense that's clearly the problem. Franklin acknowledged it was "fair" to ask what the Nittany Lions' struggles against Ohio State mean in the bigger picture, but wasn't biting on why they have been unable to get over the hump.
"That's a good football team. What I'll talk about is, today we lost to a really good football team on the road," Franklin said. "We had our chances. We battled. We weren't able to capitalize. The big-picture things, I'll be happy to talk about that at some point. But right now, I want to talk about that we lost to a really good football team on the road. We didn't make enough plays when we needed to make the plays."
The Nittany Lions have three of their final five games at home, including Michigan on Nov. 11. They are likely to be favored in every game the rest of the way, with the exception of the Michigan game.
"We can only control what we can control and go out and do what we did the first six weeks," Allar said. "Today obviously wasn't good enough at all. If we attack each week and don't lose faith in each other, we can still be in the position we want to be at the end of the year. We can't worry about the outside noise and just come together as a team and stick together."
Senior defensive end Adisa Isaac said there won't be any kind of split between the offense and defense. Penn State limited Ohio State to just two touchdowns and had a fumble return for a touchdown called back on a holding call in the second quarter.
"Times like this, everybody wants to divide and point fingers, but we don't do that," Isaac said. "We try to keep everything positive. It's a long season ahead of us. We just gotta keep our heads up and keep going because it's not over."
Asked if he felt like the defense played well enough to win the game, Isaac said, "Obviously not, no. We didn't win."