Balance is a big, but often misunderstood word in football. Take for example, “balanced attack” a phrase thrown around more often than the football itself.
To most people that means how often you run and how often you pass. To most coaches, it means the ability to run when you have to and the ability to pass when the situation calls for it. The concern is less about how often it happens, as much as the ability to do everything well.
And sure, there’s some “balance” when it comes to how often you call certain types of plays, but that’s not the point anyone is making here.
Enter Penn State’s offense. For the better part of the past several seasons it has moved with a certain forward momentum, the Joe Moorhead era in particular was an uptempo, fast-strike attack. Drives didn’t always last that long, but they didn’t need to when you can score in three or four plays.
The other side of that coin was a weakness, one that saw Penn State sometimes struggle to close out games with longer, more methodical time-eating drives. Of course this isn’t an easy thing to do in the first place, but Penn State had little success in a handful of big moments pulling off that kind of pace.
In 2020 the pendulum might swing in the other direction, Penn State with five different drives that lasted 3:59 or longer. The Nittany Lions’ opening scoring drive was a marathon that took 7:01 off the clock and put seven points on the board.
But back to balance and the ability to do more than one thing and do it well. Can Penn State win with long methodical drives? Probably, the other team can’t score if it doesn’t have the ball, and there are worse things than keeping the defense on the sideline, resting its legs. The only challenge is not having all that time result in zero points.
What happens when Penn State is losing though? Can the Nittany Lions be a team that strikes quick and a team that takes time off the clock?
“I think you have to be able to do both then,” Penn State coach James Franklin said on Tuesday. […] And I would say we’ve had some opportunities for some explosive plays in the running game by breaking a few more tackles and sustaining a few more blocks. We’ve got to find a way to create more explosive plays in the passing game. That’s something that we have to do a good job of and we’ve done that at times.”
“And then, you know, then we’ve got to be able to get into some formations in obvious running situations and be able to run the clock out and I do think we’re in a position now with what we’re doing offensively to be able to do both and do both well. To be explosive in 2020, a lot of it deals with being able to make plays on the perimeter. If you’re going to be put in one-on-one situations you got to be able to make people pay for that. If you get a light box, then you need to be able to create explosive plays there. And then there’s going to be times in the game, whether it’s four minute or whether it’s short yardage that you need to be able to run when everybody in the stadium knows you’re going to run.”
This past Saturday -despite the result- Penn State did do a little bit of everything. The Nittany Lions’ what-then-appeared-to-be, game-winning touchdown was the third play of 44-second drive with a 60-yard strike to Jahan Dotson. Equally true, the Nittany Lions turned the ball over on a clock-chewing drive that lasted 5:41 and ended deep in Indiana territory.
In total Penn State managed five passing plays of 15 or more yards and six rushing plays of 10 or more yards. It was in large part the turnovers and penalties that doomed the Nittany Lions, an issue that one imagines will be addressed in the coming days, especially since both have rarely been an issue for the program over the past several seasons.
There is little doubt, balanced, quick, fast, slow or methodical, that Penn State will need explosive plays this weekend against Ohio State. Little doubt as well that long drives are good, but they can’t come up empty and they better happen during the right parts of the game. Back when Penn State offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca was at Western Michigan, the Broncos managed a touchdown drive that lasted one second short of nine minutes during the 2017 Cotton Bowl. The only problem, there were only 12 minutes left when the drive began and Western Michigan was down 14.
Now down seven, only a few minutes remained and Western Michigan lost the game.
So you don’t want to run out the clock on yourself either.
