Sometimes the opt outs don’t have a huge effect given the relative strength of the two teams in the bowl game or the matchups on the field. Other times you wind up wondering stuff like “Would Kalen King and Johnny Dixon have fared any better against a razor-sharp Jaxson Dart and his strong receiving corps than Cam Miller and Zion Tracy?” or “Would Manny Diaz have been able to make a few more moves on the chess board to match Lane Kiffin’s offensive creativity than Anthony Poindexter and Terry Smith?”

With the caveat that bowl matchups, even those of the New Year’s Six variety, almost never have both teams at the fullest versions of themselves these days, it was mildly disappointing not to see those matchups, or how Chop Robinson and Olu Fashanu, the Nittany Lions’ two best players in 2023, would have played against just the third quality opponent on the schedule.

But none of those things affected the outcome anywhere close to the same way the issue that had nothing to do with opt outs or coaching changes, the issue that has been the issue for Penn State this season, did in the Nittany Lions’ 38-25 loss to Ole Miss in the Peach Bowl.

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Happy holidays, Penn State fans. May it be a true season of giving for your families and friends.

And your beloved football program.

James Franklin put a bow on another top-20 recruiting class this week, the ninth time he has done so in the 10 recruiting cycles in which he’s led the Nittany Lions per the 247 Sports Composite rankings (and the 10^th time, Penn State finished 21^st). Recruiting is how he made his bones, and whether it’s getting the top players from Pennsylvania in most years or finding some under-the-radar gems in both expected and unexpected recruiting pockets around the country, Franklin has pretty consistently delivered on that front, if not at quite an elite level, and that’s with coordinators coming and going at nearly the speed of the transfer portal itself.

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As 2024 rapidly approaches, what Penn State fans are looking forward to the most isn’t the Peach Bowl or even what Andy Kotelnicki might be able to do with the offense next season.

It’s that the college football playoff will be expanding next season, and for a program that has found itself in the top 12 in five of the last eight years but never in the four-team playoff, that is a change that can’t come quickly enough. The larger field will provide opportunities for a new kind of relevancy for several teams, and if recent form holds and the transfer portal is abundant, the Nittany Lions stand a very good chance of being one of them.

But if Penn State isn’t able to address the reasons it hasn’t yet cracked that top four under James Franklin, it’s hard to imagine any potential playoff game wouldn’t deliver the same nauseating feeling that has been brought on by its failures in marquee matchups.

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It’s hard to name more than a few Penn State players or coaches who have had better two-year runs than the departing Manny Diaz, who switched his job title from Nittany Lion defensive coordinator to Duke head coach this week.

Bill O’Brien comes to mind. Saquon Barkley (yes, he was here for three years but his 2016 and 2017 seasons were a considerable step up from his 2015 debut). Joe Moorhead, who directed the offenses in which Barkley flourished. Ki-Jana Carter in 1993-94.

The point is, it was a short but brilliant body of work, and it now leaves James Franklin in the familiar space of equal parts disappointment and opportunity. The odds aren’t great that Penn State will find someone better than Diaz for its next DC. But the same conditions that helped Diaz lead the Nittany Lions to some historic defensive numbers will at least make that possible.

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James Franklin got his guy. He’d had his eye on this Big 12 offensive coordinator for quite some time and had admired his work at multiple programs. Penn State’s head coach had decided his own offense needed a change, and this coach, Franklin decided, had the experience directing potent, explosive offenses that would translate to helping shove the Nittany Lions over that steep, elusive mountain peak separating good from great. The hire was widely praised and another example of Franklin’s enduring ability to recruit not only top players but sought-after coaches as well.

That guy, of course, was Mike Yurcich.

Three years later, Franklin made another change, and the Big 12 OC this time around is Andy Kotelnicki, from Kansas by way of Buffalo and the University of Mary, which is a real school in Division II. Once again, the credentials are impressive. Once again, the stakes are high, and once again, there is moldable talent in the barn, even if it appears the offensive line is headed for yet another rebuild.

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Sometimes marketing slogans wind up being just a bit too on the nose.

For the last few years, we’ve been told, if only by promotional materials, that Penn State was “unrivaled” but it was only during the 2023 season, perhaps, that this was actually true.

The Nittany Lions, you see, spent essentially the entire season playing only against themselves. In the 10 wins, including Friday’s ho-hum, 42-0 defeat of a tired-looking group of Michigan State Spartans in Detroit, they were almost always in command, thanks to an incredible defense and an overall talent advantage on offense that mitigated most of their discombobulation on that side of the ball. They were trying to win the game, but because those games were essentially in hand before they even started, they were really trying to reach a standard that they never quite found.

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As a young child, I remember watching Penn State dismantle Rutgers quite often and quite thoroughly in Beaver Stadium, and in between series I’d study the Scarlet Knights’ players and coaches in the game program and wonder just what the hell a Rutger was.

Eventually, I learned that Rutgers University, formerly Queen’s College, was re-named in 1825 for Henry Rutgers, a Revolutionary War colonel and philanthropist whose timely donation saved the school from closing for a third time in its young history. I also learned that Rutgers’ remains were lost for several years, which I suppose is either a mundane bit of trivia or an apt metaphor for most of the team’s offensive organization in the years since. Or maybe both.

Which brings us to Saturday’s Rutgers-Penn State contest, which pitted the Scarlet Knights’ run-heavy but aerially deficient attack, led by old friend Kirk Ciarrocca, against the Nittany Lions’, um, shall we say inconsistent attack, led by interim co-OCs Ja’Juan Seider and Ty Howle following Sunday’s unceremonious canning of (Ciarrocca replacement!) Mike Yurcich.

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The 2-point conversion try was the icing on the horse apple and, at the same time, the all-too-fitting curtain call for Mike Yurcich.

A bunch of guys ran out to the left side of the field. Drew Allar took the snap in the middle of the field. No one on Michigan’s defense seemed really fooled, and no Penn State receiver was demonstrably open. And it, like so many other pass plays in 2023, resulted in an incompletion. This one just happened to be fancier than the rest, and in a bigger spot.

The most curious thing about that call, though? It should have been an extra point try.

And there, right there, is the conundrum that Penn State faces in the wake of Yurcich’s firing on Sunday afternoon. There were all sorts of little things wrong with the Nittany Lions’ offense this season, despite what was widely considered to be one of the most impressive collections of talent it has fielded on that side of the ball, at least in the JFE (James Franklin Era). Routes run without precision. QB and receivers not on the same page. Missed pass protections. Pre-snap issues. Problems even getting the damned play in to the quarterback.

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Somewhere, Joe Paterno and Bo Schembechler were watching and smiling (somewhere in the more earthly realm, Jim Harbaugh was watching, too, but probably not smiling). The BIG NOON matchup between Penn State and fellow top 10 team Michigan was a classic throwback. Your run game vs. my defense. My run game vs. your defense. Pass? Are you nuts? This isn’t a basketball game.

For three quarters and change, James Franklin had decided to take the ball out of his sophomore quarterback’s hands (his feet were another story) and try to beat the Wolverines in the old-school way. And for three quarters and change, his defense and his run game were at least giving the Nittany Lions a chance to do that, and in the process steal that desperately sought win over one of the league’s two bullies.

There were two problems with this plan, though, and both of them proved fatal in the guts of the game. The first was that Michigan is, well, built for this, both in terms of physical construction and philosophy. Penn State is built for … well, we’re still not sure, and that’s a problem that transcended this game. The second was that Michigan held the lead, held the high ground, and that enabled the Wolverines, even with one of the nation’s most efficient quarterbacks at their disposal, to call 33(!!) consecutive run plays on offense and, on defense, force Penn State to try this wild and crazy strategy of throwing the football and catching it.

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Take a quick look at Big Ten scores from Saturday, Penn State fans. Indiana beat Wisconsin. Michigan State beat Nebraska. Illinois topped Minnesota.

If you’re one of those dyed-in the-wool Nittany Lion fans who are predicting a 10-2 finish for this team and have been ever since the loss in Columbus and maybe even before that, and you’re bitter about Penn State not being able to win the games that really matter even if they flex their collective muscle in those other 10 games (see Saturday’s 51-15 pasting of Maryland), well, there isn’t much I can say here that will change your mind.

But it probably needs to be said, before Penn State plays the other of its two season-deciding games a week from now in Beaver Stadium, that what the Nittany Lions do in those “other” Big Ten games matters, both now and certainly moving forward.

The Nittany Lions are still not in the top class of the conference, where the Buckeyes continue to grind out wins and the Wolverines, while enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous cheating accusations, continue to just grind teams to pulp. But they are in a class by themselves just below that class and above the rest of the conference, where it’s a lot of closely contested if not brilliantly played football most weeks, where a game like Iowa’s 10-7 win over Northwestern is not nearly the outlier it should be.

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