Penn State Football: Mike Yurcich Talks T-Formation Magic

PASADENA, Calif. — It all started against Ohio State as Penn State rolled out a t-formation look that would make the oldest football coaches in America cry with joy. Forget all the fancy things about offensive football in this day and age, here’s some good old fashion physical pigskin.

And it has worked like a charm. Penn State has become almost unstoppable in certain situations with this formation. Short yardage, red zone, anywhere on the field. You see Penn State line up in that T and all bets are off. Take for ical example Penn State’s opening touchdown, a five-yar physical run by Nicholas Singleton with blockers rolling out in front of him. A near unstoppable wall of running backs, tight ends and offensive linemen.

“You’re going to have to do some things this week on offense and defense and special teams that are going to give Ohio State pause. [Make them say] what are they doing here? That’s not what we expected,” Penn State coach James Franklin said in the lead-up to the Nittany Lions showing the new formation against the Buckeyes. “Whether that is a different formation to run the same play or a different motion to run a play or a different personnel group or whether that’s a different scheme that we run this week that we haven’t shown out of a similar formation per personnel group.”

But why this? Of all the wrinkles, not many are more retro than this. So time to get to the source, Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich.

“Well, it’s something that you can carry each game plan, and then you can tweak from game plan, to game plan,” Yurcich said after the Rose Bowl on Monday evening. “But it takes personnel, the right personnel. So we have both of our tailbacks who can lead on the play and we have the tight ends and the guys up front that really make it go. Sometimes it’s not necessarily about the scheme, it’s about the personnel. And so it’s personnel driven. And those tailbacks have to be unselfish, depending on which way it goes. One’s gotta block and we don’t know exactly how it’s going to unfold until we line up.”

There is something funny about the answer to Penn State’s running game issues often being solved by one of the oldest formations in the book. The Wikipedia page photo about the T-formation isn’t even in color, let alone representative of how offensive football has been the last 20 or so years.

Does Yurcich find it kind of funny that he, a modern mind in offensive football, is going back to the basics? Ask him exactly that and he laughs, but that doesn’t mean he’s totally surprised that it works. However a trip to the Beaver Stadium all-sports museum did give him some insight into what once was, an old play by former Penn State ehad coach Rip Engle.

“It all goes full circle in football,” Yurcich said. “I was going through museum there underneath the stadium. And there’s a play I think it’s Rip Engle old playbook, and he had a shovel play – we ran it last year a couple times. But you know, it just goes to show that football has been around for so long and once you think you’ve invented something, it’s probably already been coached and called and run by somebody else somewhere. Whether it be a junior high high school or college or NFL it’s just a full circle.”

It might go full circle, but for Penn State it often goes full steam ahead, no matter how it works. Like they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.