Losing is rarely straightforward.
It’s easy to get caught up in the fact Penn State tried a fake field goal early in its 21-17 loss to No. 6 Michigan on Saturday just a few feet from Michigan’s end zone and that said fake field goal went terribly wrong. It’s harder to consider the fact Penn State ran 58 more offensive plays over the next three quarters.
It’s easy to think about a play call here or a missed opportunity there. That’s how the game goes, and certainty nobody would accuse James Franklin and his staff of pitching a perfect game on Saturday. However let’s consider a few other things.
But first a quote.
“Obviously that’s not the time you want to lose Jahan Dotson,” Franklin said of Penn State’s star receiver who was injured before Penn State’s final play. “At that point of the game you’re thinking players not plays. You want to be able to get the ball into your playmakers’ hands.”
A few things to unpack and a few questions to follow.
First, a handful of truths. Penn State can’t run the ball with any regularity. Sean Clifford is a fine quarterback but he is not transcendent, nor is he consistent enough to make up for his teammates’ own shortcomings. He is capable – more than he gets credit for – but his greatest asset is his experience rather than his skills. Additionally, Penn State’s offensive line has done nothing to provide Clifford or a stable of running backs with any consistency of their own.
In total what you see is what you get. Penn State’s offense is fine – in spite of its own shortcomings it has figured out ways to put it together just enough to be in all of its biggest games. For all their issues the Nittany Lions do just enough under offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich to have a chance to win, backed by a defense that is far more well defined than its cross-ball counterpart. The Nittany Lions haven’t given up more than 26 points on defense in 14-straight games. In today’s era of high-scoring college football, a streak that could very well be good enough for 14-straight wins.
And yet.
It’s in this that Franklin’s tenure since 2017 has become a bit of a paradox, one which was again illustrated on Saturday. It’s the tendency to blame Franklin for a close defeat, but the equally compelling truth Penn State has perhaps done more with less.
Or to state it otherwise, Penn State nearly beat a Top 10 opponent on Saturday with a team that can’t run the ball, has a slightly above average quarterback and effectively a single consistent big play threat. Despite being greatly flawed they are also far more competitive than they ought to be.char
In another context consider Penn State’s recruiting the past four years. The Nittany Lions have brought in four classes, with just one falling inside to Top 10 according to the 247 Network. Ohio State? The Buckeyes have managed to bring in three classes inside the Top 5 over that same period of time.
And yet only one game in that series since Franklin took the job has failed to go into the fourth quarter undecided – the 2015 meeting in Columbus.
But back to Franklin’s postgame quote.
In the absence of Dotson, Penn State had no real options. That doesn’t mean they absolutely couldn’t have converted on fourth down, but it illustrates a larger issue that this offense has faced all year; they simply don’t have many consistent big play threats.
To put this point in the form of a question: how many players on Penn State’s offense in 2021 would have started in 2017? One, and his name is Jahan Dotson. And he wasn’t in the game.
None of this is to absolve Franklin and his staff of various mistakes over the course of Saturday’s loss, but rather to illustrate that Penn State’s larger issue is not singularly game management as much as it is an underlying need to constantly improve personnel. Consider the 2018 season, headed by Trace McSorley but absent many of his beloved teammates. McSorley was steady, but the Nittany Lions stumbled to 9-4.
Pragmatically it seems unlikely Penn State’s offensive line is bad simply because Phil Trautwein went from being a sensible coaching hire to completely inept. It seems unlikely that Mike Yurcich, who has excelled his entire career at putting points on the board and yards in the box score – including time at Ohio State – suddenly arrived at Penn State and lost all of the things that made him great at his job.
And yes, development is a coach’s charge, but are players losing to Top 10 teams underdeveloped or simply not good enough?
Ultimately losing is a confluence of events including coaching, development, play calling and personnel, but in the case of Penn State’s 2021 season and losses to Ohio State and Michigan, there is something to be said for the fact the games were ever close in the first place. Ohio State and Michigan were vastly better teams and vastly more complete, and yet both nearly lost.
One final thought experiment is to consider Penn State’s series against Ohio State – in particular since the Nittany Lions have split their series against Michigan 3-3 over the past six meetings.
How many times has Penn State faced Ohio State with comparable talent? Nine times out of 10 the Buckeyes run Big Ten teams off the field, and yet annually Penn State has faced Ohio State with a worse team – save 2017 – and has still managed to nearly win.
For many this will come across as a Franklin defense, but rather it’s a reframing of the larger issue at hand. Until Penn State is on equal personnel footing with Ohio State and Michigan on an annual basis, losses like the Nittany Lions have been handed this year will continue to exist no matter who the coach is and scheme will just be an attempt to mask the likelihood that skill will eventually catch up to them. In truth close losses to Ohio State could become less frequent because the margin of defeat becomes wider. And even if or when Penn State increases its quality of personnel the likelihood of winning only slightly increases with it. The win rate between two equal opponents is still just 50%. Losing close games to good teams isn’t incompetence as much as it is inevitable.
These issues still fall under the purview of Franklin and his staff – he is charged with remedying them both through development and player acquisition – but these issues are as connected to the practice that goes on next to the Lasch Building as they are the demands for upgrades inside of it.
And it might be easy to say “how can fancy and seemingly meaningless renovations away from Beaver Stadium change the outcome of a poorly executed fake field goal?”
The answer is that it might not because it is only part of the equation. A nicer parking lot won’t make field goals for you. The other answer is that all the teams Penn State is nearly beating or wants to become have those things, and in turn the players and the success Penn State has longed for.
All told there’s a reason why one team felt it had to run fake kicks and punts in order to have a chance, and why the other team simply had to wait for its playmakers to make plays.
Because your schemes are only as good as your players, and if you could simply scheme your way to wins in spite of personnel, recruiting wouldn’t matter.
So yeah, losing isn’t binary.
