Bodani: My crystal ball for Penn State in 2016

The most intriguing team in the Big Ten still has nearly four months to prepare for the season.

The best team? Not a chance.

One of the very best in the league? There's too much yet to prove to consider that.

And yet the Nittany Lions, at least another year away from contending for big prizes, could be one of the toughest teams to handle this fall — and to decipher, too.

That's what happens when you've finally collected enough talent but are still lopsided when it comes to depth and where that talent is stocked.

Like how the Lions might offer the best tailback in the league (Saquon Barkley) to go with the best receiver combination (Chris Godwin, DaeSean Hamilton). And yet they must overcome sketchy tight ends and blocking.

Or how the Lions offer two of the best linebackers in the league (Brandon Bell, Nyeem Wartman-White) and one of the best safeties (Marcus Allen). And yet all three must overcome injury issues, and an unproven defensive line must be sufficient.

Penn State football chat, 8 p.m., May 9

The defense figures to flash between shaky and superb, depending on their health and the opponent at hand.

That means the difference between a disappointing six-win season and an impressive nine-win season will depend on the offense and its new director. Coordinator Joe Moorehead has the track record and the weapons at his disposal for the offense to carry the load.

They may need to swing several evenly matched games, such as those three straight September weeks of Pitt, Temple and Michigan, two of them on the road.

Winning two of those three and staying close in the third could provide the confidence and momentum to help the Lions navigate the rest of the schedule well enough. That would mean finding ways to beat Maryland and Iowa at home and Indiana and Purdue on the road.

Accomplish that, and it won't matter much what happens elsewhere, at least for one more year during this recovery process.

That would point to an eight-win regular season, nine if everything breaks right. Moorehead's offense revolves around tailback play, which is arguably the team's deepest spot with Barkley backed up by Mark Allen, Andre Robinson and rookie Miles Sanders.

Trace McSorley is undersized but appears to be the quick decision-maker required to trigger it all.

That means points should come in bunches, which will be required with a tougher schedule and a defense still searching for the right parts.

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So what would an eight-win season earn them? That's difficult to say. The Big Ten's bowl game lineup is far-flung and ever-shifting to begin with, let alone considering that New Year's Day falls on an NFL Sunday.

But eight victories could send the Lions to San Diego and the Holiday Bowl, although that's a long way to travel two days after Christmas for a fan base still not fully recovered from NCAA sanctions, one that hasn't rooted on a big winner in six years.

Nashville could be in play just before New Year's Eve. It would be a more comfortable landing spot with another year gone since Franklin left Vanderbilt and a rape investigation involving its players.

Of course, the bigger-play Outback Bowl in Tampa always loves the Lions and could get them for the first time since the 2010 season, when Joe Paterno and Urban Meyer squared off. Nine victories would help lock up that trip.

Regardless, the Outback will be played in the afternoon on Monday, Jan. 2.

That means the holidays would last one day longer for a lot of fans.

Which is at least a pretty good thing to think about with four more months of preparing and hoping and not much else.