Lions & Twists & Stunts, Oh My! Billed as an Exotic Break From the Brent Pry Norm, Act One of ‘The Manny Diaz Experience’ Turned Out to be Surprisingly Efficient and Effective, as well.

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BOX SCORE      FTB CHARTING

Thanks for nothing, Fox Sports Graphics Team.

As the rest of you spent this holiday weekend celebrating the American workforce by driving around town in your Japanese-made cars, floating atop your Chinese-made innertubes, and sipping German beer, the infrequently hard-working folks at FTB were vigorously spinning the hamster wheel of creativity, desperate to find the perfect lead for the inaugural ‘Hindsight’ review of the Manny Diaz era.

After racking our brains for literally dozens of seconds, we spent the next hour screwing around on our phones watching some disembodied voice rip open packs of junk wax baseball cards from the 1980s (oddly soothing and satisfying, highly recommend). Then, we snapped back to the task at hand, re-focused for a good minute, and settled on this corny bit where we turned two Manny Diaz defensive formations into Rorschach inkblots and had an imaginary psychward patient guess the down and distance.

There was just one problem…the ‘splotchy’ EFX on Photoshop wasn’t enough to blur out Fox’s superimposed on-field down and distance graphic, thus ruining the bit. Such a shame.

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Though James Franklin’s well-worn weekly 1-0 objective was met, reviews of Mike Yurcich’s Year 2 debut vary from ‘meh’ to ‘Man, not this again.’

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If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then surely embedding the viral gif of Purdue safety Chris Jefferson’s Puke-6 regurgitation celebration – a true Icky Shuffle – into this blog post should thoroughly summarize Penn State’s 2022 opening act on offense.

But we’re not going to do that. Shocking, we know.

Given the sophomoric DNA of this media enterprise, you have every reason to drop your jaw and raise your eyebrow(s) right now. Leading off the third season of ‘Hindsight’ with a man vomiting on live television is the content equivalent of a hanging slider, right over the plate, seconds after the clubhouse attendant banged on a trash can to let us know what’s coming…and yet, we’re taking the figurative pitch, 1. Because it’s super gross, repulsive, humiliating, offensive, distasteful, crude, objectionable, and, according to the fable of David Hogan from the movie Stand By Me, a dangerous contagious projectile, and 2. …

…Because every time we tried to embed the gif, WordPress crashed.

Stupid technology.

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Editor’s Note: Every Monday Evening From Now Until the End of Spring Ball, FTB Unpacks All the Interesting/Unique/Quirky Play Calls We Saw During Mike Yurcich’s 1^st Season as the Nittany Lions’ OC

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Shoehorned in the southwest corner of Beaver Stadium – a space that prior to 2000-2001 renovations was nothing more than a poorly-guarded corral of riding lawn mowers — the Penn State All-Sports Museum is a must-stop for any Nittany Lions fan looking to kill a few hours on a Football Weekend Friday.

This place has got everything: large pictures of James Franklin, small pictures of Bill O’Brien, a weighted dummy for lifting in the wrestling section to remind you how weak you are next to a scale (for some reason) to remind you how fat you are, a bench chair from Rene Portland’s embarrassing blowout loss in the 2000 Women’s Final Four, bowl trophies, useless trivia, John Cappelletti’s Heisman, and enough interactive touchscreens to keep Clorox stock (NYSE: CLX) viable in a volatile market.

Oh, almost forgot…the All-Sports Museum also contains former Penn State coach Rip Engle’s offensive playbook from the 1950s, a cool nugget current OC Mike Yurcich shared with beat reporters on a Zoom press conference last October. The way Yurcich spun the anecdote made it sound like museum curators let him thumb through Engle’s playbook, because inside of it he was shocked to find a shovel pass concept from 70 years ago that 100 percent mirrored his own.

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Editor’s Note: Every Monday Evening From Now Until the End of Spring Ball, FTB Unpacks All the Interesting/Unique/Quirky Play Calls We Saw During Mike Yurcich’s 1^st Season as the Nittany Lions’ OC

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With 11:25 remaining and Penn State clinging to a precarious 1-point lead over Auburn, life imitated Electronic Arts.

If the design of Brenton Strange’s slow-footed trot to the 2 – arguably the funkiest play in a Barnum & Bailey three-ring Whiteout that had failed fat-man fake punts, phantom Intentional Groundings, and a down that POOF vanished into thin air — looked familiar in the moment, well then there’s a good chance that you, like us, wasted too many days playing EA’s old NCAA Football video game franchise.

Indeed, “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game.”

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Penn State Punctuates its Two-Week Binge on Offensive Lineman by Adding an Experienced ‘Plug-and-Play’ Contributor

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Ah, The Ivy League…or as it has come to be known inside the Lasch Building, Lackawanna College Northeast.

For the second straight season, a rather large student-athlete has used his time playing football within this coalition of safety schools as a springboard to tackle the athletic and academic rigors of Penn State.

Last year, it took two disjointed series vs. Wisconsin for Harvard grad transfer Eric Wilson to unseat Anthony Whigan as the Nittany Lions’ left guard, a post he didn’t relinquish for the remainder of the season. This year, it’s Cornell offensive tackle Hunter Nourzad whose recent decision to pick Penn State over offers from Iowa, Illinois, Auburn and Virginia Tech not only further fortifies the burgeoning Ivy League-to-Happy Valley pipeline but also provides Phil Trautwein a dependable and accomplished replacement to fill one of three holes on the Nittany Lions’ offensive line in 2022.

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Exit No. 5 – Enter No. 5 as Strength, Speed and Sure Hands Arrives in One Package with Penn State’s Newest Roster Addition.

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Apparently this is gonna be a thing.

Twelve months after he absolutely electrified Penn State’s hesitant-to-change fanbase by simply catching up to speed with the rest of the sport, James Franklin has once again stepped foot in Transfer Portal – College Football’s bargain bin – and already crossed ‘WR1’ from his off-season shopping list.

Like most of Franklin’s 2020-2021 portal rescues, former Western Kentucky stat gobbler Mitchell Tinsley fits a certain profile. Recruiting stars deficient (Derrick Tangelo). Limited college offers out of high school (Eric Wilson). Late bloomer physically who outgrew his Outlet Mall irregular measurables from high school, sprouted into an impact overachiever at the college level, and is now eager to see if he can shine just as bright on a bigger stage (Arnold Ebiketie).

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Enter Understudy, Exit Undefeated Season as Penn State Fans Overload WebMD’s Servers in the Wake of Losing a 23-20 Heartbreaker to the Hawkeyes

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Late in the 4^th Quarter, well aware they couldn’t come close to running out the clock, Iowa’s coaches chose to take consecutive knees on 2^nd and 3^rd down.

I’m gonna type that sentence again for emphasis: Late in the 4^th Quarter, well aware they couldn’t come close to running out the clock, Iowa’s coaches chose to take consecutive knees on 2^nd and 3^rd down.

Pause a second and just let that sink in.

…

…

…

Up a field goal – not 4 points, 5, points, 6 points, or 7 points, or 11 points – and with a makeable 10 yards standing between them and certain victory, Iowa stiff-armed the plausible approach faster than a broke dude shooing away the dessert menu on a crappy first date and instead WILLINGLY surrendered possession back to Penn State with more than 40 SECONDS remaining.

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 Judging From What Was Said Right After Penn State’s Never-In-Doubt 38-17 Rubber-Stamp Performance vs. Villanova, Good is Now the Enemy of Great as the Nittany Lions Offense Seeks Balance

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FTB CHARTING    BOX SCORE

Burned through all our leaf blower material already. Therefore, executive decision: Pithy intros are reserved for FBS opponents.

Let’s get to it.

Formations

The week-to-week evolution of Mike Yurcich’s offense sort of resembles that famous 1965 Rudolph Zallinger ‘March of Progress’ illustration, you know the one where the monkey gradually morphs into early man…but in reverse.

On Saturday, the same modern mind that flung the ball all over the field, challenged refs’ cardiorespiratory capacity with his Meep-Meep tempo, and reduced tough-guy defenders to nothing more than a bunch of injury-faking thespians four years ago at Oklahoma State lined up in what Wikipedia calls “the oldest formation in American football” – the T formation, invented in 1882 by Walter Camp and revived 50 years later thanks to a revolutionary, game-changing innovation…the introduction of the hand-to-hand center-quarterback snap.

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In a Beautifully Boring 44-13 Blowout of Ball State, Penn State’s Offense Kept Plenty of Rabbits Tucked Inside Their Hats for Saturday’s Showdown on College Football’s Grandest Stage

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Wait, that’s it?

THAT’s the dreaded, painful learning curve required to master Mike Yurcich’s high-octane, bombs-away offense — 30 ugly, scoreless minutes in Madison?

You sure? Because when Joe Moorhead piloted this ship back in 2016, it took a good five or six weeks – sans the second-half comeback that wasn’t at Pitt — for the offense to sail straight and find the proper course.

And then last year…actually let’s not talk about last year. We’ll leave the subtle jabs at Kirk Ciarrocca’s jalopy, 3-wheel Dale offense to salty Sean Clifford.

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Editor’s Note: Each week during the season, the FTB Staff will release its scouting report on Penn State’s upcoming opponent. Normally, these blogs will be posted at 11 a.m. EST Thursday and Friday…but we’re a little premature this week. Hey, happens to the best of us. 

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Wisconsin defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard’s life is a John Cougar Mellencamp song waiting to be written.

Reared in Tony, Wisconsin, a ‘town’ of 113 people, Leonhard’s Herculean high school athletic accomplishments – gaining 500 total yards from scrimmage in a single football game, nailing 10 3-pointers in a basketball game, striking out 19 of 21 batters in 7 innings – sound so fantastical even Al Bundy and Uncle Rico call BS. But, apparently, it’s all true…or at least that’s how it reads on the giant wood Jim Leonard sign near the edge of town; you know, the one a guy in a “dusty, dented and scratched red Chevrolet Silverado 4×4 pickup truck” constructed few years back.

When no Division I school offered Leonhard a scholarship, he walked-on at Wisconsin, played four years, and was named All-American three times despite not earning a full-ride until his senior season (according to Wikipedia, anyway. This can’t be right, can it?!?! Dude was paying for his own Meal Plan while an All-American safety??!?!)

When no NFL team bothered drafting Leonhard, the 5-foot-8 Scrappy Doo made the Buffalo Bills roster as an UDFA and stuck around the league for decade, earning $9 million in the process.

And this past winter, when the bigger-than-Jesus (in Wisconsin, anyway) Green Bay Packers wooed and courted Leonhard to fill their vacant DC position, the Badgers’ 38-year-old X’s and O’s prodigy turned them down, explaining to madison.com, “I love being back here at my alma mater and honestly trying to take this program to places it hasn’t been.”

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