FORE! THE GLORY: Penn State Offense Hoping To Gain Strokes On Field (not give them to fans) As Season Progresses

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For a long time, golfers looked at putts per round as a key statistic. Then, a few years back, a more advanced metric emerged that was a more accurate gauge of putting success or failure—strokes gained. See, no two putts are created equal, so a golfer who hit 16 greens but had 30 putts had a much worse day on the greens than a golfer who had 32 putts but only hit nine greens and didn’t miss anything outside of five feet. Strokes gained measures how a golfer did compared to the rest of the field, not simply the number of putts.

The football equivalent of putts per round is third-down conversion percentage, which measures an offense’s ability to stay on the field but does not, by itself, account for the overall success of the offense. Would you rather be a unit that converts 7 of 10 third downs but only winds up with 20 points or an offense that converts 4 of 8 third downs but has five plays of 30 yards or more that all go for touchdowns? And, like putts, not all third downs are created equal. Are you failing to convert a bunch of 3rd and 2s or 3rd and 9s? How often are you even getting to third down in the first place?

All of this is a roundabout way of examining what was, to stay with the analogy, a rough afternoon on the greens for the Penn State offense. The Nittany Lions were locked the BLEEP in defensively and on special teams in a 34-0 rout of Florida International on Saturday, but an offense that had looked potent if not incredibly efficient the week before against Nevada was neither for the first half and, really, most of the game, this week. On third downs in the first two quarters, Penn State was 2-of-8. On fourth downs, it was 2-of-4. Seven(!!) trips into Panther territory resulted in only 10 points.

Drew Allar, who completed just half of his first 16 pass attempts on a drizzly afternoon, did and should shoulder much of the blame for the offense’s inability to get out of first gear. His accuracy wasn’t there on throws that weren’t caught, lowlighted by his toss to Nick Singleton’s feet in the flat, and even a few that were. He wasn’t alone. Several of Andy Kotelnicki’s run calls on third and short downs wound up falling short, often the result of defenders that weren’t blocked.

But, to revisit the top of this column, the more concerning issues were the offense’s inability to move the sticks prior to third and fourth down against an FIU defense that had no business even slowing the Lions down, and the lack of chunk plays that make third downs unnecessary. After peppering his new wideouts in Week 1, Allar had eyes mostly for tight end Luke Reynolds early on this week, with most of those throws within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. The Nittany Lions made a concerted effort to establish Singleton and Kaytron Allen and had some success outside the hashes, but the interior lanes were often clogged, dotting what had been touted this summer as one of the nation’s best offensive lines with question marks for the second straight game.

In the second half, after back-to-back chunk plays—Allar to Trebor Pena, who broke a tackle and picked up 30 yards just before Allar’s end zone bomb to Devonte Ross—seemed to have finally broken the ice, the offense responded with a pair of punts on its next two possessions. Allen’s breakaway for a 67-yard tuddy late in the fourth was well-executed but served more as a reminder of the meat left on the bone.

Penn State’s less-than-intimidating non-conference schedule poses a bit of a double-edged sword for its coaches. On one hand,1-0 is 1-0, and they’re going to win these games comfortably, even with lackluster performances by one of the units, and have the opportunity to play a lot of reserves and to experiment with various parts of the playbook. On the other, at some point you have to figure out which plays are going to work and which players are going to make them work, and it is impossible to say the offense took a step forward from Week 1 to Week 2. They still have a couple of weeks to figure out some rhythm and consistency, plus a swarming defense that did seem to improve from Week 1 to Week 2 (holy Chaz Coleman), but they will likely need more than 10 points in a half to have a chance against high-octane Oregon, even in raucous White Out conditions.

The football equivalent of strokes gained is expected points added, or EPA, which measures points added or lost each play compared to the expected value and takes situation into account in ways that third-down conversion rate does not. Last season, Penn State’s offense was the seventh-best in the country in EPA, and, while that number wasn’t close to top-10 in either of the first two weeks, that offense has arguably more talent this season if you combine the skills of the current tight ends to replace Tyler Warren and make up the rest of that deficit with the improvements at wide receiver. It must also be noted that, after an impressive performance in the opener against West Virginia, it took the offense a couple of weeks to find its rhythm last fall.

This is an offense that should, and likely will, gain some strokes on the rest of the field at some point this season. That it didn’t have the, ahem, line or speed on Saturday is of some concern, but it’s still the first week of September, and when you can win 34-0 without your best stuff, it might only take a couple of good swings to put it all together.