Penn State football dominated Illinois Saturday night at Beaver Stadium to the tune of a 56-21 blowout victory.

What started off as a back and forth contest turned into an onslaught on behalf of the Nittany Lions. Penn State scored a season-high 56 points, with one of the catalysts to that performance being explosive plays.

Explosive plays are something head coach James Franklin emphasizes every week, and this week was of course no different.

“The explosive play battle, we were able to win that as well and get to 15%,” Franklin said.

On offense, Penn State had 15 “big plays,” which means 15+ yard passing plays and 10+ yard running plays. Add in Lamont Wade’s 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown and Jahan Dotson’s 50-yard punt return and you have 17 big plays in this game for the Nittany Lions.

For Wade, it was the first touchdown of his college career and comes a week after he had newfound success as a kick returner. Wade said he actually knew he was going to score right when he caught the ball.

“I knew I was gonna score, Wade said. “We had executed all week in practice and just watching the film I just knew how I was supposed to set it up and knew what I was supposed to do there. I was just excited to get the ball in my hands and get it done.”

Dotson continued his season-long success in the dominant win over the Fighting Illini. The wideout totaled six receptions worth 189 yards and two touchdowns, both of the touchdowns being of 70 yards or more. The first came on the first play of the game on a simple hitch route.

The second touchdown allowed Dotson to show off his run-after-catch ability once again, as he took a screen pass 70 yards to the house.

Dotson spoke about the importance of explosive plays and how its always a goal of the team heading into each game.

“That’s definitely one of our focuses coming into every single game, meeting our explosive play goal,” Dotson said. “We work on that in practice every day, just trying to gain explosives cause we know that helps out the defense on the back end. Any chance we get to make a play, we want it to be an explosive.”

Sean Clifford arguably played his best game of the season Saturday night, completing 73% of his passes and totaling 285 yards and two touchdowns through the air. The signal caller echoed a lot of what Dotson said in regard to big plays and spoke about one of the big plays the wideout had.

“One of the things we talk about all the time is that we wanna be explosive, and I thought that we were able to make plays in the run and pass game,” Clifford said.

“It just makes life a lot easier when you can throw a hitch and it goes 70 yards,” Clifford continued. “I didn’t do anything with that. I just took what the defense gave me.”

Not only did Penn State get it done through the air, but on the ground as well. Keyvone Lee and Caziah Holmes combined for 31 carries worth 162 (5.2 yards per attempt) and three touchdowns. The pair chipped away at Illinois’ defense while also managing to break off four runs of 10 yards or more.

Offensive lineman Will Fries, as well as the rest of the offensive line, played a pivotal role in the rushing attack’s success. Fries talked about the offense’s success with moving the ball throughout the game.

“I think it came down to trusting our training, you know, our rules and our game plan…It’s good to get those explosive plays and keep the ball moving down the field. That’s a recipe for winning football,” Fries said.