The deep breath before the plunge: Pause for reflection and then crank some Steppenwolf: Nittany Nation is taking a magic carpet ride.

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I was fortunate enough to pen the first words published to this offbeat corner of the Penn State blogosphere following the Nittany Lions’ Rose Bowl victory (the last “real Rose Bowl” ever staged, in all likelihood) that capped the 2022 football season, so I’m digging the symmetry of being once again honored with this chance to author the final thoughts to appear here before this new season kicks off. In fact, I’ll be here every week; all throughout the season, I will be your humble blogger (Blogy-er?) for what we once called “Football Eve” ‘round Happy Valley parts.

This is going to be a column about the journey from late August to early January, one we all take together alongside our champions in Blue and White, and I hope it will be a chance to set the tone and frame a narrative heading into each Saturday. Other competent and capable folks, on this platform and several others, will equip you with the knowledge, analysis, and statistics to own your text thread or tailgate. They’ve got you covered in that department. For my part, I’ll seek to help you orient yourself as a small, but nevertheless crucial character in the much larger unfolding story of a season.

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Q: Why is Drew Allar like a farmer?

A: He’s been throwin’ seeds all spring and summer!

As Penn State’s 2023 football season mercifully approaches, all eyes are on the Nittany Lions’ rocket-laser-armed quarterback. His teammates have raved about his abilities. Longtime Associated Press beat guy Ralph Russo wondered if he isn’t the most important player in the country. His grrrrreatness is validated by none other than Tony the Tiger!

What’s more, the addition of Allar to the starting lineup (OK, so he hasn’t technically been named the starter…yet) also means offensive coordinator/mad scientist Mike Yurcich finally has a player who will force defenses to cover just about every part of the field. Thought Penn State had a dynamic offense with (current Packers QB2!!) Sean Clifford? Wait’ll they get a load of these guys when Allar is ripping the ball 30, 40, 50 yards downfield.

Here’s the thing, though. Arm talent is a great, great thing for a quarterback to have. And Allar’s size (6-foot-5 with some added bulk and strength) enables him to see the field and provide a stable platform for that aforementioned rocket laser arm. But if arm talent and size were all it took, Anthony Morelli and Christian Hackenberg would have achieved far more at Penn State than Michael Robinson and Trace McSorley. Allar is going to make a bunch of plays that few other quarterbacks can make this season. But it is the plays that a lot more guys have the ability make—but often don’t—that he’ll have to make consistently if Penn State is going to have the type of season that matches his talent.

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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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There are only two things, if you believe the word on the street, that stand to prevent a Nittany Lion offense that appears to be stacked from threatening to blow up the scoreboard this autumn:

1. Drew Allar needs some time to become the real deal (quite possible) OR he isn’t the real deal (shut yo’ mouf!!)
2. Allar is money but his wide receiving corps isn’t up to snuff OR they don’t provide him enough support to, um, be money

Maybe KeAndre Lambert-Smith is ready to make the jump from ‘Occasionally Explosive’ to ‘Consistently The Man.’ Maybe Tre Wallace is going to step up and be the solid No. 2 that this offense sorely needs. Maybe Dante Cephas will be able to produce at the Big Ten level the way he did in the MAC for Kent State. Or maybe someone will emerge from the grab bag containing Omari Evans, Malick Meiga, Liam Clifford, Kaden Saunders, Malik McClain, Anthony Ivey, Cristian Driver, Tyler Johnson (this meeting room is standing-room only) and be a modified Cinderella story not unlike Jordan Norwood and Deon Butler exploding onto the scene from relative obscurity in 2005.

Or, just maybe, the group as a whole will underwhelm, to the extent that a Parker Washington-Mitchell Tinsley-led unit did for much of 2022 or, perhaps, even worse.

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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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Contrary to the offseason narrative, Penn State senior cornerback Daequan Hardy’s 2022 numbers suggest it might not take much to return to form.

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.

After punctuating a pleasantly-surprising junior campaign with a cinematic pick-6 at Michigan State, piercing the sheets of snowflakes in his road all-whites as the blizzard raged on, it was expected Daequan Hardy would take another giant step forward last season.

Well, that didn’t really happen.

While secondary teammates Kalen King and Johnny Dixon took to new defensive coordinator Manny Diaz’s system like ants to a picnic, Hardy failed to feast – a disappointing year-to-year regression that sort of slid under the radar thanks to the Nittany Lions overall statistical dominance on defense.

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I find myself against the continued addition of schools to the Big Ten for reasons both mathematical — how many programs can you cram into a conference before you remove the “Ten” from its name? Twenty? Forty? — and practical — having women’s volleyball or men’s soccer teams bussing or flying to all parts of the country during the week is no good for athletic budgets, athlete well-being, or in-person fan experience.

When it comes to football expansion, however, I say bring it on.

Take a look at Penn State’s 2023 schedule. Whether you’re bearish (you see three or four losses), bullish (you see one or two losses), or super-bullish (no losses and no margins of victory less than 20 points), there are a handful of games you know are simply not going to be competitive, even accounting for the annual noon kick/looking ahead/hurricane remnant games in which Penn State forgets to show up for the first half and winds up winning by 10 instead of 28.

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

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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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Year 10 of the James Franklin Era at Penn State begins in earnest in slightly under four weeks, and the August leading up to the season opener includes a quality those first nine Augusts were, to various extents, lacking: Optimism.

Think about it for a second. When was the last time Penn State entered a season with this much collective excitement/expectations from fans, media, and, if you squint a little bit, from the team itself?

During Franklin’s first two seasons, 2014 and 2015, the Nittany Lions were most greatly feeling the effects of the Sandusky sanctions. Forget expectations; the hope in those years was that Penn State wouldn’t fall on its face. The 2016 season that wound up as the coming out party for Saquon Barkley and ended in a legendary Rose Bowl shootout, if you remember, started as a summer in which people were willing to give first-year starting QB Trace McSorley and the new OC from Fordham some room to grow, and ugly early losses to Pitt and Michigan did not exactly foretell the fireworks to come.

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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.

Hand up, this exercise won’t be as fun or nearly as debatable as Wednesday’s ‘Build-A-Blocker’ blog featuring the Penn State offensive line…but we have an obligation to fill the digital newshole, so here we are.

Not only is Penn State’s 2023 RB room more top-heavy than a bodybuilder who ignores Leg Day, the dynamic duo sitting atop the depth chart – sophomores Kaytron Allen and Nick Singleton – are vastly different runners with their own unique skillsets. And while that lack of redundancy between the two makes Batman and Fatman an ideal complementary 1-2 punch and a headache for opposing tacklers, it also makes this pick-and-choose hypothetical entirely predictable.

Heck, for the sake of mixing things up, we briefly considered adding an ‘Experience’ category to this story, so I could serve up a softball for fifth-year Minnesota transfer/Williamsport native Trey Potts…but Allen and Singleton’s individual freshmen season carries nearly eclipsed Potts’ four-year totals. So that wouldn’t have worked. Not to mention the stages and the stakes for Singleton and Allen’s runs were much grander than what Potts experienced.

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