Penn State Will Have to Improve Run Game, but History Says Passing Attack Will Still Carry the Day Under Yurcich

There is something hilarious about the juxtaposition of Penn State’s offense.

On the one hand the Nittany Lion offense is something of a revival of fan favorites. Penn State goes under center. It pulls off quarterback sneaks. It uses a tight end as a fullback in a strange wildcat package. At times it looks like an homage of all the things football traditionalists adore: functional, basic and pragmatic formations and decisions.

On the other hand Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich is also a staple of all the things new about the game of football. The Nittany Lions are explosive down the field, unique in their formations and personnel usage and the pass is the primary means of communication. For all Yurcich has installed that reminds everyone of what once was, the Nittany Lions’ ability to score quickly and through various forms of explosive plays is a billboard for how the game has changed.

As a result it can be easy to see what you want in Penn State’s offense, a unit that has produced flashy touchdowns coupled with the occasional bouts of self-inflicted incompetence. The Nittany Lions have managed over the course of just about every game this season to field an offense that has alternated between a near perfect realization of Yurcich’s vision and a reflection of Penn State’s current shortcomings.

This was most recently on display Saturday as Penn State rolled to a 38-17 victory over Villanova in a game that featured 429 yards of passing – 401 of those coming from Sean Clifford – and a net of just 80 yards rushing for the home team. It was a game in which the Nittany Lions racked up 332 passing yards over the course of just seven completions but were also 0-for-3 on third-and-short which is measured at four or fewer yards required to gain.

Parker Washington and Jahan Dotson each had over 100 yards receiving but Penn State averaged just 2.4 yards per carry. There was good and there was bad.

“You have to play to your strengths,” Penn State coach James Franklin said after the game. “But you have to recognize your weaknesses and what you have to work on. What we don’t want to do is obviously abort the passing game, especially with the weapons that we have right now and go all run game because then you won’t be where you want. So we just have to gradually take steps in the run game.”

How exactly Penn State goes about doing that remains to be seen. Through four games Noah Cain leads the Nittany Lions with 164 yards on the ground despite carrying the ball just once on Saturday afternoon due to a lingering injury that limited him this week in practice. Effectively, the Nittany Lions have a leading rusher by virtue of Cain having the most yards but do not as of yet have a particularly effective No. 1 back. It’s an unexpected twist for a unit that was expected to be Penn State’s strength in 2021 but has been otherwise absent either by virtue of its own play or the play of a slightly retooled offensive line in front of it.

Whatever the case might be, or whatever the root cause of the issue is, the Nittany Lions will have to improve in a running game that headed into Saturday’s contest was the 104th best (or worst, depending on how you fill your glass) rushing offense in the nation, averaging just 124 yards per contest, a figure that dropped to 113.5 yards per game after Penn State’s win on Saturday.

The difficulty is determining what success in the running game actually is in Yurcich’s offense. The answer might not be so much the raw numbers themselves as much as the ability to run when you absolutely have to, something Penn State has not been able to do by and large through four weeks.

“You got to be able to run,” Franklin said. “There’s gonna be times where we’re going to have to run the ball out on offense and a four minute offense is going to magnify those issues. So we’ve got to find a way to improve these areas because we can’t be so one dimensional.”

The good news for Penn State is that history suggests a Yurcich offense doesn’t need to be great running the ball to work. Through the past eight seasons of being an offensive coordinator – a span that saw him at Texas, Ohio State and Oklahoma State – Yurcich’s offense ranked an average of 60th in the nation in rushing offense. The previous four years were Yurcich’s most successful on the ground topping out in 2019 with Ohio State’s No. 5 ranked run game but the Buckeyes’ perpetual stable of talent undoubtedly helped that cause. Nevertheless even in his four best rushing years, Yurcich’s run offense was ranked No. 37, No. 5, No. 46 and No. 47 in the nation. A season at Ohio State aside, Yurcich’s offense was successful on the ground but not wildly so.

Through the air the story was much the opposite. In Yurcich’s final four seasons at Oklahoma State (2015-2018) his offense was ranked in the top 10 in total passing offense each of those years. Additionally, Oklahoma State was ranked in the top 17 in scoring each of those season as well.

The juxtaposition between passing and running in that span is also striking. In 2015 Oklahoma State had the nation’s No. 7 pass offense but the No. 114 rushing attack, a trend that generally held the next three seasons.

2015 Oklahoma State: No. 7 passing, No. 14 scoring, No. 114 rushing, No. 114 in yards per carry

2016 Oklahoma State: No. 9 passing, No. 17 scoring, No. 68 rushing, No. 60 in yards per carry

2017 Oklahoma State: No. 1 passing, No. 4 scoring, No. 47 rushing, No. 46 in yards per carry

2018 Oklahoma State: No. 10 passing, No. 13 scoring, No. 46 rushing, No. 40 in yards per carry

Obviously comparisons across conferences do not hold entirely true or without some degree of apples and oranges. The Big 12 is not renowned for its defensive acumen and the Big Ten is infrequently kind to teams that are one dimensional in a conference that prides itself for having more lower scoring affairs.

However, as the Nittany Lions left the field on Saturday there remained two equally true possibilities. That Penn State’s running game woes will need to improve, but a Mike Yurcich offense may never be about the run game. Because judging by history it never really has been.

The question now turns less to the numbers at the end of the day but the third-and-shorts. Win those and the rest might not matter all that much.