STATE COLLEGE The first college football game was 112 years from being played when Benjamin Franklin wrote a bit of wisdom for “Poor Richard’s Almanac” in 1757 that has an odd bearing on the 2010 Penn State season.

“For lack of a nail, the shoe was lost; for lack of a shoe, the horse was lost; for lack of a horse, the rider was lost. ...”

Mr. Franklin, in the guise of Poor Richard, wrote, outlining a series of seemingly small but increasingly consequential events that lead to a nation’s defeat in war and subsequent toppling of the kingdom.

Not that any single statistic equates to that missing horseshoe nail, but the overall diminishment of the Nittany Lions’ usually staunch defense can be traced in large part to a dropoff in the pass rush that must be addressed as Penn State (6-3, 3-2 Big Ten) visits No. 8 Ohio State (8-1, 4-1) Saturday.

It’s a game that should illustrate, one way or the other, whether coach Joe Paterno fresh off his 400th career victory and his staff have done enough blacksmith work to preserve what’s left of the kingdom. The fact that the Buckeyes are 17Z\x-point favorites would indicate that, despite the Nits’ three-game winning streak, some key element is still absent.

“Our job is to get better each week, to keep working on the little things,” Paterno said Tuesday. “We’re not there yet. We’re getting to where we’re a pretty good football team. But we’ve got a long ways to go before we can think we’re better than pretty good.”

In 2009, Penn State went 11-2 and registered 39 sacks, which ranked 10th among the nation’s 120 Football Bowl Subdivision teams. Those 39 quarterback takedowns totaled 223 yards in losses.

Through nine games, the current Lions have only 13 sacks and rank 91st in that category in the FBS, for only 68 negative yards. And that’s after Penn State picked up a season-high four sacks, good for 24 yards in losses, against Northwestern quarterback Dan Persa in last week’s come-from-behind, 35-21 victory over the Wildcats in Beaver Stadium.

Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor can do damage with his legs, but the junior is a long-strider, reminiscent of former Eagles QB Randall Cunningham, plus he has a stiff arm straight out of Earl Campbell. The offense he directs is light on finesse, but heavy on power.

“These guys are going to try to ram it down our throats,” Penn State linebacker Michael Mauti said of the Buckeyes.

Defenses that load the box to slow down the Ohio State ground game, though, have been burned by Pryor’s 20 touchdown passes. Even when Pryor is hurried and forced out of the pocket, he’s apt to take off like an antelope if he spies a hole.

That makes it imperative for Penn State a team that prefers to generate pass-rush heat from its front four rather than with a heavy blitz package to cut off Pryor’s escape routes, and to sack him often enough to make him at least a little jittery.