As Penn State closed out spring practice Friday night at Beaver Stadium in front of a smattering of fans, it was hard not to consider the future.
The 2021-22 season will mark James Franklin’s eighth at Penn State and as he nears the decade mark in State College – something that once seemed improbable for a coach with a nomadic past – he also chases down the half century mark in his own life now 49 years of age. Assuming all of Penn State’s regular season games are played the regular season finale against Michigan State will mark Franklin’s 100th at Penn State. In turn, what happens next for both parties is an interesting thought experiment to have.
And much of it starts at quarterback.
It can be easy to forget the twists and turns that have led Penn State to this moment, a point in which the quarterback position is a forgone conclusion but the results are not. As a matter of summary Sean Clifford is effectively the starting quarterback by virtue of many dominos: it’s Brandon Wimbush, it’s Justin Fields, it’s the transfer of Tommy Stevens and the three-year tenure of Trace McSorley. Some of these decommitments or departures are more consequential than others.
Regardless of those aforementioned events it is entirely possible Clifford would have been Penn State’s starter no matter his predecessors, but one imagines a world in which the recruiting bounces go differently and the permutations that followed change the course of the program more substantially in a positive direction. Ostensibly, Clifford – who committed to Penn State in 2015 – may have never ended up in Happy Valley. In a sense, Clifford has been a part of the James Franklin era nearly as long as Franklin himself.
To be sure, whatever his shortcomings might be or have been, Clifford was more than capable of the job in 2019 en route to 11 wins [a mark that is perhaps unfairly marred as underwhelming given its close proximity to other “so close yet so far” seasons] and while he was certainly not perfect in 2020, he was also not the only issue the Nittany Lions faced – both of their own creation or misfortune. In totality, Clifford might be Penn State’s biggest question mark, but he’s also proven to be more than capable of carrying the Nittany Lions to momentum sustaining success than he perhaps gets credit for. As a summation, Penn State is not worse off with Clifford, he is simply the result of a sequence of events that came before him.
And all of this leads you to a Friday night in State College and the months that will follow.
Absent of nuance, 2021 feels like it holds the potential for a second watershed moment during James Franklin’s tenure. With the 4-5 season of 2020 now in the past, 2021 provides an opportunity to return the program to something more familiar – winning. It doesn’t have to make the elusive playoffs or find a way to finesse itself to a win against Ohio State, but 9, 10, or 11 wins would fully cleanse the bad taste from the mouth of both the program and its supporters. That would be fine, normal, and expected. The failures of 2020 did not feel like the result of systemic issues within the program but nothing erases a bad season or the existential question marks that come from one quite like winning.
And this is where the challenges arise.
Penn State plays at Ohio State, at Wisconsin, at Iowa, at Maryland and at Michigan State. It faces a new-look Auburn team, a former Top 25 team in Ball State and has to deal with whatever form of Michigan the Wolverines put forth during the latest iteration of a pivotal season under JIm Harbaugh. Oh, and don’t forget those pesky Hoosiers with plenty to prove.
There is no rest in this schedule, nor is there much narrative respite for a program looking to gain its footing. If the Nittany Lions were to fall in one of their first three contests of 2021 they would be 9-8 over their last 17 games. Fall twice and that record would flip to the losing side.
And it becomes a challenge on more than one front at this point. Can Penn State keep together its highly rated 2022 recruiting class? Does James Franklin have the appetite for another year of slowly undoing the momentum he had built the previous four? Does he have the appetite for the rebuilding and reloading that might follow? Do recruits see Penn State the same way they may have just a few years ago? Do coaches? Do fans? Does Franklin want to deal with a hiring of a new university president and the possibility that Sandy Barbour may not wish to stay in her role as athletic director for much longer – or at all – than her current contract due to expire in August of 2023?
None of this is to say Franklin would leave, wants to leave or is considering leaving, but if the challenges of a more normal 2021 become an extension of 2020’s problems it creates a different kind of sell to fans who have seen the program come so far in the past decade. The best PR any team can do is winning, and the more losing that happens in 2021 the more it reminds you of 2020, or the end of 2019 or the general feeling that perhaps 2016 and 2017 are as good as it might get.
And again, much of this comes down to the man throwing the passes and many of the factors around him.
Enter a brief story:
For years former offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead would walk the sidelines during pregame warmups with his quarterbacks. They would stop every so often, check a sheet of paper and talk. Then they would continue to walk. This walk stretched half the field, and then back the way they came.
Following Moorhead, Ricky Rahne did the same when he was at the helm of the offense. He would grab a sheet of paper covered in whatever exactly populated the page, and he walked with his quarterbacks – talking and checking a sheet of paper as they strolled down the field.
In 2020 – for whatever reason, neither right or wrong – Clifford did the walk alone. No coaches, no teammates, just him and a sheet of paper.
Ultimately different coaches do things different ways so it is not an indictment of Kirk Ciarrocca, but it is an illustration of how much change Clifford has had around him. He has had four offensive coordinators, different receivers, different running backs, different linemen and different pregame routines.
And now, in the biggest year of his career, he has to do many of those changes all over again.
The good news for both him and Franklin, there is time to work, and time to improve.
“There’s just so many more things on their plate,” Franklin said Friday when asked about quarterback development. “And they also can be impacted more than any other position by the people that are around them.”
It would be revisionist history to say Trace McSorley played poorly in 2018, but the absence of a supporting cast like the ones he had in 2016 and 2017 was fully evident. In turn, one of Penn State’s most celebrated quarterbacks looked far more human than he had the previous 24 months. Subsequently for Clifford, as the talent around him grows and as the pieces around him come and go none of whom – save Jahan Dotson and perhaps a growing Parker Washington – fall into the same category of all-time talent that McSorley had to work with. A consideration that opens the door to an oversimplified possibility that Sean Clifford is simply Trace McSorley without a slew of NFL talent around him and a generational running back at his side.
But back to the changes.
“Obviously the consistency and the coaching staff and the scheme factors into that as well,” Franklin continued. “But I do also think you could make an argument – we all have strengths and weaknesses [as coaches] and you can learn the best things from each person that you’ve worked with.
“I’ve been pleased with Sean this spring.”
So what happens next? The roadmap to the improvements needed to be made?
“Between now and camp, there’s a lot that needs to get worked on,” Franklin said. “But I think that’s one of the exciting things at the quarterback position, you can work on that. You can throw routes on air all summer, you can do one-on-ones against the DBs all summer. You can do seven-on-seven. You can go back and watch all Texas’s film last year and our film from last year learn from those things. So there’s a lot that can be done. That’s player lead and player driven between now and training camp and the quarterbacks as well as everybody need to do that.”
In a sense it seems unfair to pin all of this on Clifford. As mentioned above there are things out of his control that will impact how he plays – just ask Christian Hackenberg after any given sack – but so much will come down to what he does in the next few months.
And so much of what follows in the next few years might just follow suit.
Then again, sometimes all you need is a blocked field goal to turn the whole ship around.
