On Saturday, Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki peeled back another layer of his funky onion by placing big faces in strange places.

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If you’ve spent the last 48 hours wondering why Penn State offensive coordinatory Andy Kotelnicki lined up the Nittany Lions’ offensive line every possible way other than the standard way, you’re in the right place.

To spare you another article about 44-Tyler Warren playing QB, we’re gonna spend this time analyzing a couple ways PSU used the OL alignment to create cheap yardage and baffle the defense.

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In case you missed it the 4,024 previous times it has been mentioned, Penn State TE Tyler Warren is a former high school QB…a factoid Nittany Lions OC Andy Kotelnicki took full advantage of in Saturday’s 56-0 smacking of Kent State.

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Hey! Would ya look at that! Turns out the educated guess/defrosted take/shake of my Magic 8 Ball I gave during my preseason FTB segment on Keystone Sports Network actually came true – new Penn State OC Andy Kotelnicki resuscitated the dormant 2021 Tyler Warren ‘Wildcat’ package!

And, frankly, why wouldn’t he? The wrinkle fits Kotelnicki’s offensive philosophy like a pair of Nike Air Monarchs on a 44-year-old dad. Get you best players the ball, yes, but do it in unorthodox and unexpected ways that cause confusion, hesitation, and, of course, distortion for the defense.

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Andy Kotelnicki’s most-interesting plat design might have occurred on the Nittany Lions first play from scrimmage, launching Penn State TE Tyler Warren toward a school record.

Sponsor: FTB’s 2024 Penn State football coverage is sponsored by the Sports Medicine specialists at Concierge Medical Associates. Schedule an in-person or remote consultation at: conciergemedical.ai

There were a multitude of plays worth writing about from Saturday, partially due to the fact that Bowling Green’s offense kept Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki from shutting off his brain in an unexpectedly competitive start-to-finish contest. Several of those clever concepts concluded with the ball in the sure hands of 44-Tyler Warren…including the Nittany Lions first play from scrimmage – an Unbalanced Arrow RPO.

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Harrison “Trey” Wallace got the glory, but credit a former 5-star who had no targets on Saturday as the reason the first TD of the Kotelnicki Era happened when it did.

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Before you type in the comments section that I’m being hyperbolic when I say witnessing Penn State’s fun, innovative offensive portfolio on Saturday was like a personal spiritual revival, let me remind you of this:

You weren’t assigned to drill and extract interesting X’s and O’s nuggets from the “dry hole” that was Mike Yurcich’s playsheet on a weekly basis last year. I was. And unlike creepy 8-figure CEOs or Buffalo Bills fans, I derive no pleasure from pain.

What can’t be disputed, though, is that offensive explosivity is BACK in Happy Valley. Amongst offensive coordinators making their blue-and-white debuts in the James Franklin era, Andy Kotelnicki’s 7.62 yards per play average vs. West Virginia ranked No. 1 – almost a full yard better than runner-up John Donovan’s per play showing vs. UCF in Ireland a decade ago. So, yeah, it was refreshing to see some chunk plays, daydream of what may be, and irrationally formulate a bunch of feel-good, too-early overreactions from those explosives as a fan.

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As Penn State enters 2024 toting a sack full of question marks at WR, the lion’s share of optimism related to the passing game rests inside Andy Kotelnicki’s big, beautiful brain.

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Little inside peek at how the digital sausage is made here at For The Blogy…

In early July, I received this less-than-concise email from my editor:

It feels like 100 percent of the optimism around the Penn State passing game entering 2024 isn’t that the WRs improve, or Drew Allar takes the next step, BUT RATHER that Andy Kotelnicki can “scheme guys open.” I’ve heard this mentioned multiple times on various outlets.

So here’s the article: 1. Intro: Is “scheming guys open” real, or it is just some bulls**t talking point pundits use when you’re stuck with mediocre skill guys? Then 2. The Beef: If that’s the case, just how does Andy Kotelnicki scheme guys open?

Thankfully, the answer to Question 1 is an emphatic YES…or else, this would have been a real Shetland Pony of a blog post.

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Though it remains cloudy whether the famous author coined the phrase, it’s a known fact that in the 1880s Mark Twain popularized the line, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.”

In other words, numbers can prove both sides of any argument, no matter how radical or preposterous…a premise like, oh I don’t know, Mike Yurcich’s 2023 offense was the most efficient of any Penn State attack in the James Franklin Era when the ball crossed opponents’ 20-yard-line.

According to our friends at teamrankings.com, last year’s Penn State squad ranked 5^th in the FBS in Red Zone Scoring Percentage (94.64%) and T-7^th in FBS in Red Zone Attempts per Game (4.7). So, while it certainly seemed like the Nittany Lions became lifeless and stagnant as the field shrank (shrunk?) – and that Yurcich’s limited list of concepts inside the 20 and repetitive use of bread-and-butter alignments (cough, T Formation, cough) were the major culprits of that perception – statistically speaking, new Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki has some Shaq-like size 22 shoes to fill in that particular department.

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For new Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, the “why” behind his prevalent use of RPOs – the three-letter cornerstone of modern football that’s often treated like a repulsive four-letter word while keyboard thumpers melt on message boards – is best explained through a childhood toy for nerds.

It’s called a Hoberman Sphere. If your parents never bought you one, congratulations.

Invented before fun, the Hoberman Sphere is a colorful, plastic, finger-pinching geodesic dome capable of massive contraction/expansion that can be either symmetrical or irregular depending on which jagged joints are pushed and/or pulled. If you got suckered into chaperoning school field trips to any Science Center or Children’s Museum in the past 30 or so years, you’ve likely seen stacks of them in the gift shop go untouched.

So what the heck does this have to do with Kotelnicki’s catalog of RPOs?

Glad you asked, lazy transition device.

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Welp, the highly-anticipated season finale and last unchecked NY6 bowl win “box” on Penn State’s program checklist was a tough watch. No way around it. Season-long themes remained true: out of sync, stagnancy that produced little to no explosive offense. It’s also worth noting that PSU was missing some of their top players.  Negatives aside, let’s take a look at one of, if not the only, exciting offensive play of the afternoon.

Fun.

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Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2023 football coverage is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

“You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been. – Maya Angelou.”

 –James Franklin, possibly*

Starting tomorrow until some random late May 2024 afternoon when those antiquated college football preview magazines hit the shelves at what’s left of Barnes & Noble Booksellers (just a stack of Star Trek Funko Pops and a scattering of road atlases last time I checked), we’ll be Quasimodo-ing it in our depressing 1-bedroom  apartments, sifting through film after film after film and marveling over the magnificent schematic sandcastles new Penn State OC Andy Kotelnicki molded during his days at Kansas and Buffalo.

But, for now, let’s take one last glimpse at the moist, amorphous pile of washed-away dirt left on the shoreline that was the 2023 Penn State offense…if, for no other reason, to identify which specific offensive concepts Kotelnicki needs to lug his shovel and pale to and patch up first.

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Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2023 football coverage is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

Best for last, right? Penn State’s regular-season finale included explosive runs, explosive passes, and jussssst enough competency on offense for the fanbase rightly laud the substitute-teaching job conducted by Co-OC’s Ja’Juan Seider and Ty Howle. Heck, a few brazen message board warriors pounded their dust/crumb infested keyboards asking for Penn State head coach James Franklin to consider an internal promotion of Seider or Howle (or both…because we still aren’t sure who was actually calling the plays).

Not to be all Debbie Downer, but for what it’s worth, every concept PSU ran this past Saturday Friday had been called dozens of times during the  mostly-forgettable Mike Yurcich era.

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