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.

To quote novelist Charles Dickens, It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…depending on what side of the number you were on.

Man, it had been a good 6 or 7 minutes since I saw something rile up and divide the always-sensible, level-headed Twitter/X community the way Penn State’s cleverly-designed, spread-covering 4^th quarter TD pop pass from backup Beau Pribula to backup Trey Potts did. Oh boy, you were either BIG mad…

Second time this year James Franklin has run up the score so Penn State covers the spread.. If I'm an opposing player/coach and someone pulls this (fake taking a knee) up 21.. There is going to be a price to pay. Classless! https://t.co/cX6HFH33Ov

— Cʜᴜᴄᴋ ᴅᴏᴜɢʟᴀs ✪ (@ChuckDouglas_) October 1, 2023

Or, um, whatever the opposite of BIG mad is (BIG happy?)…

Me when penn state hit the fake kneel to cover yesterday https://t.co/WJHj8lasa1

— The Franchise (@Kfrancis09) October 1, 2023

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As in football as in life, the best-laid schemes…something, something, something. Sorry, we never read the poem.

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.

Not that the Nittany Lions needed to do anything too fancy, but Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich called a pretty methodical, vanilla game – which, I suppose, is a fitting flavor for a White Out.

Tasked with scoring one point (1!) to best the stacked-on-cinderblocks, front-lawn jalopy that is Brian Ferentz’s offensive attack (double entendre), Penn State’s bland recipe for success leaned on its beefy blockers to win at the line of scrimmage, stacked bruising-but-boring drive-sustaining runs, and tossed in an occasional play-action opportunity in the Red Zone to boost QB Drew Allar’s stat line.

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Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich continues to show he’s a softy for these century-old classic concepts

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.

If you had third-string Penn State running back Trey Potts throwing a balloon ball touchdown on your Saturday bingo card this week, well, A) You drew the worst bingo card in the history of bingo and B) You’re one lucky SOB.

In all seriousness, there are few things more satisfying than a perfectly executed gadget play. The fact that Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich only dialed up 4 variations of them last season (throwback screen, flea flicker, end around, double pass) made this unexpected rabbit-out-of-the-hat even sweeter.

While it’s completely reasonable for fans to assume Yurcich’s thought process when deciding whether or not to dial up a halfback option (RB has the option to run or pass) late in the 3^rd Quarter of a nine-point game was, “You know what? Screw it,” this was actually a calculated and set-up play choice.

Let’s dissect the most fun PSU TD of the young season, shall we?

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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.

Spoiler Alert for those of you stuck at a wedding (or worse) this past Saturday who have yet to watch the replay of the Penn State-Delaware “contest”: The fighting Blue Hens were  predictably overmatched EVERYWHERE. Line of Scrimmage. Perimeter. All points in between.

But for the sake of this blog post, let’s focus our attention upfront, where the big eaters roam.

Traditionally, the simplest way to take full advantage of a talent/size discrepancy along the line of scrimmage is through gap-scheme runs. While Mike Yurcich has primarily leaned upon a zone-based run scheme throughout his tenure as an offensive coordinator, starting last year he mixed in more gap-scheme plays so that he’d be able to counter different defensive fronts.

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The Mountaineers’ teeth-chattering fear of the Penn State ground game opened the door for this potent Cover 1/Cover 3 beater

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.

Hate to say we told you so, buuuut…

Avid FTB readers might recall that two-ish weeks ago we predicted “shot” plays would become a point of emphasis this season now that No. 15 was slinging the rock instead of No. 14. Sure enough, our shake of the Magic 8 Ball didn’t steer us wrong…further proof that a broken clock is right twice a day.

In fact, our prediction came to fruition early in the first quarter.

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Concepts that were no-go’s in 2021 and 2022 and run formations put on the shelf might be now be back in the fold.

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If there’s one main thing we’ve learned about Mike Yurcich throughout his two-year tenure dialing up plays in Happy Valley, it’s that the guy truly believes personnel shapes play-calling.

You’ll recall in the immediate days following Yurcich’s surprise hiring back in Jan. 2021, we gobbled up loads of bandwidth and killed several digital trees churning out video and written content dissecting his formational tendencies, situational preferences, and general offensive philosophy from stints in the PSAC, Oklahoma State, and an 11-month cameo at Texas.

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Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich’s use of Formation Into The Boundary (FIB) alignments mixed with an up-tempo pace has produced positive results during his tenure in Happy Valley.

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Football is a game of acronyms. PAT. LOS. TD. DL. OL. QB. FF. FR. FG. Then there’s WTH when Miles Sanders gets the handoff on a game-deciding 4^th and 5. And, for our degenerate readers, we can’t forget ATS and ML.

Today, though, we’re going to unpack two lesser-known acronyms that show up fairly regularly on Penn State OC Mike Yurcich’s playsheet, both conveying the same premise: FIB and/or FSL. That’s “Formation into (the) Boundary” and “Formation (into the) Sideline.”

Before we get super technical, let’s begin with the basics and explain why all of this is a bigger deal in college football compared to the NFL.

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In two stat-packed seasons in the MAC, Penn State’s WR transfer addition proved he could consistently create separation.

Sponsor: For The Blogy’s preseason 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.

On paper, press coverage and jam technique sounds optimal for defenses. Get your hands on receivers early, knock them off their stems, aggravate ‘em, and mess up the timing of the entire play. It’s aggressive. It’s proactive. It’s literally in your face. Well, not your face, but the receiver’s face.

But, like everything else too good to be true in life, choosing to play press coverage is a risk-reward proposition for defensive coordinators. Whiff on your offhand jam? Oh boy…the wideout is gonna be looking at your toasted defensive back in the rearview or the stadium Jumbotron all the way to the painted promised land. Choose to play “press-bail” – a bit of a bluff technique in which it appears pre-snap the corner is about to get physical but instead hits a full sprint backward at the snap of the ball – well, you better hope your inside help sees the slant coming.

Dante Cephas – Penn State’s newest offensive addition and a two-time first-team All-MAC weapon – has proven time and time again he can beat press coverage despite not possessing Herculean strength or Bowser speed in Mario Kart, thus creating massive separation in a small space. How, you may be asking? With advanced footwork at the line of scrimmage and obsessive attention to detail…which we’re about to outline for you.

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