This article, much like Penn State football’s opening game against Indiana is going to go off the rails after the first paragraph.
So let’s not waste any more time and get right to the madness.
Let's start with the guy who always gets the attention, and for good reason, the starting quarterback.
He didn't have a great start to his season in the first half on Saturday, to put it lightly.
Now I’ll admit. Everyone is out of practice. I know better than to call for the benching of a QB in the first half of the first game of the season. Just like Penn State, we were all a bit rusty in the first two quarters of football. The good ones adjust.
Let’s start with this understanding:
We’re not going to discuss the end of the game very much. First, everyone has already ripped those situations to shreds frame by frame. I also don’t think in those terms as an analyst. I am more in agreement with James Franklin than most.
“The hard part is here is that there are a lot of plays throughout that game that we would like to have been different," Franklin said. "I know in some ways people look at that one play, but there’s a lot of plays throughout the game that we should have done differently and could have handled better and could have made plays."
I’m sure everyone has an opinion on how to handle late-game situations - Note: They do. I’ve seen them all on Twitter - but that’s not what I do.
We’ll be looking at all of “the plays throughout the game that we should have done differently” to see just why Penn State was in that situation to begin with despite the fact that they were clearly the more talented team. Let’s start with the new-look Penn State offense and see how it functions, and why it didn’t function on Saturday.
While the offense and the coordinator have changed, the philosophy remains the same for Franklin’s offense, creating explosive passing plays in order to score gobs of points. For the record, this is the correct way to think and this is what every team in the nation should be trying to do. How they’re going about it is just different under new offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca.
Before when Franklin spoke about ‘taking what the defense is giving you’, it meant spreading the defense out and finding the hole in their coverage while running when it’s convenient. At least against Indiana, taking what they give you meant ‘run into light box counts until you force them to stop playing coverage.’
The difference, at least early in the game, was that Indiana simply let Penn State run the ball. Here is the pre-snap alignment for Indiana on the first drive of the game.
