For the most part Penn State fans’ objections to the Nittany Lions’ season have been broad rather than nailed down to a few key points. Of course this might have a lot to do with the wide range of issues the Nittany Lions have had this year, but generally speaking ‘I wish they were a better team’ is not an opinion ripe with specifics.
But there is one thing grinding the gears of more than a few fans; the red zone fade route. It’s a pass that has been thrown both this season and last under current offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca and his predecessor Ricky Rahne. You’ll find teams throwing fade routes at every level of football, so this is not a Penn State specific issue, but call a play and executing it are two very different things.
And these routes -which amount to diagonal runs towards the back corners of the end zone- have irritated Penn State fans to no end over the years. Even the beloved Bill O’Brien was guilty of them, although Penn State’s relative success at the time deemed those kinds of issues far more palatable for the average fan.
But at 1-5, every little thing is getting put under the message board microscope.
“The fades we are throwing, whether it is a perimeter fade or an inside big box, we have had a lot of success with that during practice and in camp,” Penn State coach James Franklin said earlier in the week. “We need to have a little bit more diversity in the red zone, there’s no doubt about it. We need to use the play action pass, high-lows with horizontal stretches.”
“We need to have a little more diversity, there’s no doubt about it, in the red zone.’’
Penn State is currently second to last in the Big Ten when it comes to scoring percentage in the red zone. The Nittany Lions have come away with points just 68% of the time inside the red area, 17 times on 25 trips, with 11 of those result in touchdowns, also second worst in the league.
Of course this doesn’t all come down to one kind of route, Penn State’s issues are bigger than just one kind of play. But as the Nittany Lions struggle to punch it in, doing something that doesn’t seem to be working, and doing it repeatedly, can get to be a bit much.
So why do it in the first place? Well for one, apparently it has been working in practice.
‘One of the reasons why I’ve been calling the fades down there’s something that we did well in training camp and have done a really good job with in practice,’ Ciarrocca said on Thursday. ‘You know we haven’t been able to execute it as well as we’d like in the games. [..] I think coordinators like it because it’s usually pretty safe to call, where your guy can make the play or nobody makes the play […] we’ve got to continue to diversify down there and you know put our guys in better positions to make a play.’
Ciarrocca isn’t wrong –obviously- about his overarching point. While no one can speak to Penn State’s actual success in practice, a well thrown fade ought to either land in the hands of a receiver or in not that, head out of bounds. Ideally a well run fade coupled with a well thrown ball is nearly impossible for a defender to stop.
So it’s not a bad idea.
If you can do it. But as Penn State’s season rolls along, it would be fair to question which things are worth trying again, and which are worth waiting putting in the back of book.
