An Alignment That Put The ‘Smashmouth’ In Mike Yurcich’s Smashmouth Spread At Oklahoma State, The Diamond Formation Has Been Re-Imagined In Happy Valley Thanks To A Collection Of Tight Ends That Can Do More Than Just Wreck Stuff. 

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As a fanboy of studying offensive football, I’m a sucker for some good wrinkles.

Not the wrinkles that suddenly appear the millisecond you blow out the candles on your 40^th birthday cake, nor the wrinkles you lazily try to smooth out of an unironed shirt on a rushed workday morning with sprinkles of tap water and a 5-minute tumble in the dryer (always does the trick). No, I’m talking about play-calling wrinkles – those delightful miniscule scheme adjustments that coordinators make as a season goes on.

In Week 8 vs. Ohio State, Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich finally flashed a formational wrinkle — a blast from the past dating back to his Okie State days – that had previously been oddly absent throughout his tenure in Happy Valley. It’s called the Diamond Formation.

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What’s old (like really old) is new again, as Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich’s 2021 flirtation with an antiquated alignment morphed into a full-blown infatuation in 2022.

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Apparently, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit didn’t get the memo.

In the dying breaths of the Rose Bowl’s 1^st quarter, beneath a gloomy, outlier Southern California sky that deceased journalistic windbag Grantland Rice would have gushed over in his run-on, 300-word, one-sentence lead in the next day’s newspaper, Penn State lined up in a T Formation for the 27^th time this season.

To those who diligently watched every game of Penn State’s bounceback 2022 campaign, this was no big deal – standard operating procedure in short-yardage situations.

And yet — as you’ll hear below if you click the video clip – both veteran announcers sounded absolutely bewildered/befuddled/flustered when the Nittany Lions suddenly whipped out this X’s and O’s antique near the goal line.

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We just witnessed one of the greatest and most cherished traditions of a sport that is, more than any other, built on them, passing into history. With Pasadena playing host to a playoff semifinal next season and the erstwhile Granddaddy of Them All set to become just another postseason venue in the years to follow, the time of the Big Ten and PAC-12 champions meeting in the Rose Bowl has officially ended. The last paragraph of that era’s closing chapter has been written, and that’s as close you’re going to get to finality right now in the volatile world of college athletics. Whether you enthusiastically embraced the Rose Bowl mystique or dismissed it as so much Big Ten navel-gazing, it’s hard to deny there was something special – something uniquely “college football” – in the annual clash of the cold-weather Rust Belt and Sun-drenched West Coast bathed in the light of the California Golden Hour before a national audience on New Year’s Day. And now it’s over.

On to the knee-jerk Thoughts & Opinions, fresh from the Nittany Valley…

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For our readers who have been A) abducted for the past month or B) experiencing never-ending rolling power blackouts or C) stuck in line at PHL, DTW, IAH, or some other three-lettered torture chamber/airport since early December trying to reschedule your canceled Southwest flight, All-American Penn State cornerback Joey Porter Jr. will be the only healthy-ish Nittany Lion defender choosing to sit the Rose Bowl on January 2. If not the greatest cornerback who ever called Beaver Stadium home, then certainly slated to be the highest-drafted, JPJ opted to forego the free trip to Pasadena, thus eliminating any chance that a tweak, pull, sprain, or tear might jeopardize the millions of dollars that await him on future Sundays. We certainly wish JPJ luck, but as his famous father’s former boss like to say: “We’ll focus our attentions on the players who make themselves available to us.”

Now, let’s talk about Ji’Ayir Brown. Can we talk about Ji’Ayir please, Mac? I’ve been dying to talk about Ji’Ayir with you all day. After setting the pace for all of College Football in interceptions last year (6), Brown leads all B1G safeties in PFF pass rush grade (88.5), pass rushes (44), sacks (3) and QB pressures (10). If we expand our search parameters to include the Pac-12, the only guy who tops any of those numbers is (ironically) Utah’s Cole Bishop. Coincidence…or conspiracy?

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Keyvone Lee: BACK. Caedan Wallace, Juice Scruggs and Olu Fashanu: BACK to BACK to BACK. Nick Singleton: FAST. Kaytron Allen: FAT(man).

After patching the run game together for much of November with wads of Hubba-Bubba, rubber cement and the free, second can of Flex Seal (James Franklin ordered “within the next 15 minutes” when the commercial popped on – Smart Man), the Nittany Lions appear to be back at full strength against the Utes when these two squads clash just on the other side of the calendar crease.

Penn State’s tandem of true freshmen (Singleton and Allen) combined for 2,346 all-purpose yards…more than 400 yards better than any single player in College Football this year. There’s a lesson there.

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