Film Study: Nittany Lions produce dominating D as offense takes next step

The Penn State football program dominated Indiana 24-0 on Saturday night in Beaver Stadium.

Sean Clifford completed another three touchdown passes, with receiver Jahan Dotson pairing up for two of them. The Nittany Lions also broke the 100-yard rushing threshold for the second time in five games this season, this time against a Big Ten opponent that ranked top 50 nationally in rushing defense. Oh, and Penn State's defensive performance was dominant in all phases.

Yet, many Penn State fans feel less than impressed with the win over the Hoosiers.

Let's get into the details of what happened in the latest edition of BWI Film Study.

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What happened to Michael Penix really is a shame.

Multiple injuries over multiple seasons are not only tough to come back from physically, but it’s also tough to come back from mentally. Most players will tell you that rehab is so much worse than working out and lifting with their team.

It’s also where we need to start when it comes to Penn State's defense and their plan of attack for the Indiana signal-caller. The constant battering of his lower-body and his current state, coming off a third ACL injury less than 12 months ago has rendered Penix an immobile quarterback. For Penix, this is a disastrous situation. His offensive line is not built to protect a statuesque quarterback that is rooted to one spot. It’s not built to protect anyone for too long truthfully.

For PSU's defensive coordinator Brent Pry, that means there are more options for how you can attack an offense if the quarterback is not a threat to run.

And he used all of them.

It was one of the most dominant defensive performances that the Nittany Lions have put together against a Big Ten foe in recent memory and it was built on two facts.

The first, as we mentioned, was that they didn’t think Penix could be a threat to break contain and run if they became aggressive with their coverage and pressures. The second was simply not respecting Indiana's speed.

We’ll get into the different coverages they deployed on Saturday and how they suffocated the passing attack for Indiana.

But first...

The Penn State defensive line stonewalled an anemic Indiana run game and forced the Hoosiers to put the game on Penix’s shoulders. Penn State ran some defensive run stunts on Saturday, but for the most part, it was simply the defensive line winning their assignments. Senior defensive tackle PJ Mustipher was particularly active with five stops, bringing his season total to 17, which ranks second in the country according to PFF.

Mustipher was particularly effective absorbing double teams on the Hoosier’s outside zone scheme, making it hard to find cutback lanes on the backside, or forcing the runner back into pursuit on the front side.

He hasn’t been perfect, but Mustipher’s improved play has been largely the reason that the Penn State run defense has been so stout this season. His play has taken a big step forward this season with the added weight and strength at the point of attack.

With Mustipher controlling the middle of the defense, the Nittany Lion’s pursuit was free to fly to the football. Penn State had five tackles for a loss on Saturday. What do all of those stats boil down to?

Penn State was bigger, faster and stronger than Indiana.

Now, to the secondary

Stopping the run and having an immobile quarterback almost go hand-in-hand in college football now. With both of those threats neutralized, Pry was able to deploy a full complement of defenders in the secondary in a variety of ways. Cover two is not a coverage the Lions plays very often with Pry as the defensive coordinator, but they used it much more on Saturday.

The main reason is that teams with speed can attack the weak points downfield with only two deep defenders. With the hashes skewing the field and boundary splits, it can open up huge holes if a team isn’t disciplined and athletic. Most teams don’t run this coverage nowadays.

In this situation, Penn State only rushes three and drops eight into coverage. They're not concerned with Penix breaking the pocket, nor do they think he will throw deep on third and short. With just a moderate amount of pressure, Penix dumps the ball off to the running back, who runs into the waiting arms of Joey Porter Jr. It was a formula that worked often for Penn State, largely in part to Penix’s aversion to pressure Penn State by making plays with his feet.

In the last two weeks, Penn State has put its secondary on an island more often than they normally do. If it felt like there were 11 players at the line of scrimmage at times, there were.

It’s important to understand that Cover one (man coverage) and Cover three (zone coverage) are different, but can look the same. Both are out of a three-deep look with a single high safety, but the assignments pre-snap are very different, especially in Penn State’s zone-drop system. Again, without the threat of Penix breaking containment, Pry felt free to send as many players to the quarterback as possible.

The bonus is that if you don’t think the quarterback will leave the pocket, the defense can use the player that would normally be a spy and deploy him elsewhere. Penn State was free to double tight end Peyton Hendershot, or whomever was the most dangerous target on a given play.

With no running game and few open targets, Penix was left with few good options on Saturday. Unfortunately for him, he played like it. Most of his passes were under 2.5 seconds and did not give his receivers time to work open against the coverage. When he did, or when he did break the pocket, Indiana had life.

The problems was that they were too few and too far between. Penix has never been a conventional passer in terms of his footwork or his throwing platform, but it was painfully clear that he was unwilling to stand in the pocket or step into his throws.

His grittiness and tenacity in the pocket last season were what made him an effective quarterback. He was willing to stand in, take a shot and still deliver the football. If he’s unwilling to do that, he’s not a viable starter for Indiana going forward, regardless of his health status.

The defensive game plan had to change slightly when backup quarterback Jack Tuttle stepped onto the field. First, he is a threat to break the pocket and showed why most college teams don’t run cover two.

His willingness to stand and deliver was also clearly a departure from Penix and oddly, him entering the game was likely the best possible shot that Indiana had on the day. He operated two of Indiana’s longest drives in terms of yards and plays.

Ultimately though, he was not up to the task of bringing Indiana back into the game.

Was Indiana injured and ripe for a beatdown?

Yes.

But even when the tide of the game changed with Tuttle as the quarterback, the Penn State defense was in control of the situation. They dictated the pace and flow from the opening kickoff to the final whistle.

After all, isn't that what you’re supposed to do to bad teams?

and the Throws Not Taken

This was Sean Clifford’s worst game of the season from a statistical and play-by-play evaluation this season. Some inaccurate passes in the short area crept back into his game (though I think one was a tipped ball on further review) and he threw his first ugly interception of the season on a pass thrown directly into the zone of safety Raheem Layne.

This play is an example of what Indiana does with its secondary to confuse quarterbacks and elevate a team with fewer high-quality athletes into one that can hang with superior teams regularly. Between Pry and Indiana defensive coordinator Charleton Warren, it was a graduate seminar on coverage diversity Saturday.

Indiana spends a lot of time pretending to play with two deep safeties.

One thing that the Hoosiers do better than just about any team Penn State faces is regularly rotating their safeties after the snap to show an entirely different coverage family than they did pre-snap.

On its face, this looks like a coverage that Penn State should want to run the ball into. Two deep players and even strength outside the hashes on the receivers. That means there is a favorable box count.

But what happens after the snap changes things radically.

The Will linebacker blitzes and the boundary safety fills his zone on the lower level, changing this from cover two or four, to cover three. Penn State’s three-man route concept is not set up to attack this concept, with Jahan Dotson streaking down the sideline, trying to get free or draw the coverage away from Parker Washington, running a deep crosser underneath.

The problem is that instead of playing in deep coverage, Layne is now occupying the zone vacated by the blitzing linebacker. Instead of an empty zone and a first down, Layne gets a takeaway.

Two possibilities happened in this play. Either Clifford truly didn’t see the robber coverage, or he did and still tried to force the ball into the window between zones anyway.

Either way, it’s a win for the Hoosiers and a bad decision for Clifford who had been playing nearly mistake-free football for a month. This was a relatively simple disguise compared to some of the other coverages that Indiana runs.

There’s good and bad news here. The bad is that Clifford is not a next-level processor of information that can diagnose disguised coverages and find the solutions mid-play at an extremely high level yet. That’s not to say he’s bad at it - he’s improved since his first year starting - but this is the SAT level exam for a quarterback and Clifford missed some questions.

The good news is that he didn’t make the same mistake the next series after the interception.

On most plays, the quarterback is reading the safeties to see what coverage the defense is playing. Usually, the safety will make an indication one way or another in regards to the way they're heading; down into a single high coverage or out into a two-deep look. Another way to think about it is either the middle of the field is open (with safeties splitting it) or closed (single safety patrolling middle).

Here, Layne does something confusing. He does nothing. It’s a two-deep look, but the middle of the field is closed because Layne hasn’t dropped to a typical depth. Without knowing the call, even on review, it’s tough to tell.

The best guess is that this is cover four, but Layne is playing shallow to take away Brenton Strange’s crossing route. Theoretically, that should open up KeAndre Lambert-Smith on a deep post behind the middle safety, but like we just talked about, Clifford no longer feels like gambling. He does the safe thing and checks the ball down to Keyvone Lee, who picks up nine yards on the play.

Progress.

For Penn State fans that feel the Nittany Lions should've hung 40 points on the Hoosiers, back up one second. As James Franklin said after every game, “Give credit to *that week’s opponent”. The Indiana defense was already outmatched athletically, then lost bodies as the game went on. Despite that, it’s a well-coached team that knows how to play together and does things that other teams simply don’t from a schematic standpoint.

This late rotation also works against the run. With a deep coverage look at the snap, it can lure teams into handing the ball off while Indiana blitzes from depth and rallies to the football. It’s a sound strategy if you can pull it off. It’s an attempt to have it both ways of playing coverage and being sound in the box against the run.

But that coverage rotation requires communication and execution. On Lee’s 44-yard run at the end of the first quarter, the safeties are momentarily confused as to which one should be filling down into the box in the run game based on the motion by Strange. After some great blocks by Eric Wilson and Strange, Lee is sprung into the secondary as the safety fills late and wide.

Offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich also attacked the defense with tempo after big plays, as he’s done in the past.

This time it wasn’t just to hopefully get a coverage bust but to force Indiana to play a basic coverage and make the read easy for his quarterback.

Indiana is forced to just line up and play after Clifford broke the pocket on third-and-7. He’s able to identify the matchup or the soft coverage he wants to gain an extra 19 yards in 20 seconds.

Clifford’s legs proved to be the difference-maker on the day. Whether it was running for free yards against man coverage, like he did above, or by breaking the pocket and throwing off schedule, Indiana didn’t have a good answer for keeping Clifford under wraps once he broke the pocket.

The early interception, as well as the complexity of Indiana’s coverages, may have limited his effectiveness as a passer, but he still made enough big plays to keep Penn State safely ahead on Saturday.

The Penn State running game had by far its best day on the ground Saturday, racking up 209 yards rushing and 144 on eight explosive runs. The Nittany Lions deserve credit for the improvement in the running game against a tough, well-coached defensive front with decent athletes. In particular, linebacker Micah McFadden is a headache to block in space and Penn State’s offensive line was able to get to him at times and create positive running plays on Saturday.

But no one wants to hear about that.

That’s because the Penn State offense was 1 for 4 in short-yardage third downs and had a fourth-down stop at the goal line.

So instead of focusing on the whole situation, let’s take a look at those short-yardage plays and what went into some of them.

Yurcich calls up a draw play with Clifford on third and one from the Penn State 42. On this play, Lee is supposed to lead block like a fullback through the hole and open up a lane for the quarterback to run through. That’s also the first issue on this play.

McFadden, an All-Big Ten linebacker, blitzes and blows up the lead block in the backfield.

The defensive line also stunts on the play, confusing the blockers. The key to a draw is literally drawing the defense up the field. With a stunt, the interior defenders gum up the interior running lanes, pinning Clifford in the backfield.

With no players pass rushing, the interior offensive line simply retreats for no reason. There’s also the small issue of Mike Miranda being blown up by the stunter.

Next, we’ll get into the issue du-jour of the night for Penn State in the running game, the tailback.

Our next situation comes in the third quarter on Penn State’s second drive of the half. The Nittany Lions were working down the field, using tempo to keep the Hoosiers from aligning properly and having a good plan for Penn State’s inside zone run to convert the third down. The offensive line gets a decent push, with Rasheed Walker making a genuine hole for Lee to run through.

Strange fights to control his block on the backside edge rusher, but is at the very worst, stalemating his man.

As we’ve talked about before, with zone running you technically have more than one option as a runner.

With the front-side closed off, Lee can either hit the C gap and run through contact, or he can bounce outside of the block by Strange and meet the linebacker scraping over the top. He chooses both...and the hole on the front-side

There are a couple of things about this play that are indicative of Lee’s performance in short-yardage situations.

The first is that his vision is not what it needs to be, nor is his decision-making. The second is his pad level. Lee is listed at 6-foot, 239 pounds. That’s a power back in every definition of the word (so is his breakaway speed from earlier).

Yet Lee runs high pads and rarely wins the point of contact, despite having momentum and mass on his side. If you’ve watched my film room sessions on Penn State prospects, this is a real-world reason that mobility and hip flexibility are critical to playing football.

Low man wins.

Aside from the fact that Lee attacked the goal line with one shoulder instead of having his pad square to the endzone, his height is an active deterrent in his ability to win these situations.

This is where the Nittany Lions miss a healthy Noah Cain. His vision and decision-making are strengths that Penn State sorely needs. But with no power in his leg drive, what can you reasonably expect him to do in these situations?

If you’ve been following along with this column so far this season, you’ve seen different aspects of the running attack malfunctioning at one time or another. What Penn State is missing is simply a player to make up for other people’s mistakes. They don’t have a dominant offensive lineman that can blow massive holes in the defensive front or a runner that can make up for missed blocks with smart cuts and explosive bursts.

That is what has led to the results you see, which has been a collection of individual mistakes resulting in consistent breakdowns. But more to the point, it’s just who they are and how they’re built.

Miranda may not be the best run blocker in the Big Ten, but he’s given up exactly three pressures so far this season, as has Wilson. Juice Scruggs has given up six. They may not be perfect, but so far this year they’ve kept their quarterback clean and the offense has found ways to win.

Penn State is going to be built on the passing game in 2021, and as long as this unit can hit timely big plays, they’ll be doing enough to keep Penn State in games.

It’s a very different test that faces Penn State on Saturday in Iowa City. The Iowa defense is a very different test for Clifford and the Nittany Lions. They play simpler, more traditional zone coverages and force the issue with a big, physical defensive line.

The good news for Penn State fans is that they've faced several teams with dominant defensive lines and they’ve been able to beat them to this point.

We’ll also get to see if the Penn State defensive front is for real and if Mustipher can keep up his elite-level production against a very talented Iowa defensive line that will test them with both power and speed.

It’s always a great game between Penn State and Iowa and this weekend should be no different.

Until Lee’s failed fourth-and-goal run, Penn State had scored a touchdown in every quarter of football since the first half against Wisconsin. They still scored a field goal in the fourth quarter on Saturday but it ruined the symmetry of my fun stat.

On a related note, if he does score and Penn State wins 31-0, I have a suspicion there would be a very different feeling about this game.

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I know what I just said about not worrying too much about run blocking but...Yikes

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Devyn Ford may not be getting touches in the run game, but he’s still giving his best effort when he’s on the field.

He buried players as a lead blocker on Saturday.

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