Hindsight 2020: PSU Offense vs. Maryland

Sigh, When Scouting 93 Plays Feels Like Being Tortured for 93 Days…Here’s A Second Look at the Nittany Lions’ Clawless Attack vs. Maryland For All You Masochists Out There.   

FTB CHARTING – BOX SCORE 

We’ll take ‘Trash Heaps’ for $1,000, Alex.

Predicted to vie for a conference and national championship before the season, this unit’s ‘offensive’ display through three weeks has fans googling where the hell the Guaranteed Rate Bowl is played.

What is The Penn State Offense?

There. There’s our touching Alex Trebek tribute. For a Canadian, he seemed like an OK dude, I guess. Here’s hoping he’s in a better place, where parting gifts like Rice-A-Roni and Turtle Wax flow like Niagara.  

Now, let’s hold our nose and dive face-first into this Turd Sandwich.  

FORMATIONS

Here’s something we haven’t seen yet this season from Kirk Ciarrocca: Penn State in Shotgun Empty.  

This took place on a critical 3rd and 6 late in the 1st quarter after Penn State spotted Maryland a two-touchdown head start. 11 Personnel, so that’s nothing new. Devyn Ford remains on the field. Pat Freiermuth remains on the field (Penn State hasn’t run a play without a tight end all season).

It’s Penn State’s 5 OL vs. 5 Maryland pass rushers. On paper, you’d take this matchup all day. But as we’re learning, a lot of these big guys in blue-and-white are Plimpton-level Paper Lions. Therefore, this happens:

No 6 OL HEAVY packages this game, although Penn State did feature two tight ends (always Freiermuth and Strange) on 17 plays – which is basically the same amount as the Indiana game, and probably would have been more if Penn State wasn’t down big at half.

On 2-point plays, Penn State lined up in the same Trips Bunch look seen on the second 2-point try in the Ohio State game. 

Whatever Ciarrocca is running out of this formation isn’t working, because on all three plays (1 vs. OSU, 2 vs. Maryland) Sean Clifford has not made an immediate throw, opting to hold the ball and ad-lib instead.

SUBSTITUTIONS

Senior RT Will Fries slid inside mid-game (James Franklin hinted at this move during the preseason, but we didn’t see it until Saturday), taking RG duties away from CJ Thorpe. Caeden Wallace filled Fries’ vacancy at Right Tackle for his most extensive action of the young (yet already long) season. Thorpe, who we put in the hot seat in last week’s HINDSIGHT, eventually returned to the field, but his snap count dipped way below Week 1 and Week 2 totals.

Felt good to see 70-Juice Scruggs get some snaps at Right Guard, thus completing his long journey back after a serious car accident put his football career in jeopardy. 75-Des Holmes gave starter Mike Miranda a breather at Left Guard once Clifford’s 3rd Quarter-fumble went the other way for six points. Menet, Fries and Walker played the entire game.

Hey look, there’s TJ Jones! The speedster from Florida broke the seal on the 2020 season during Penn State’s first drive of the game but only saw one target. 85-Rudy Lutz played a few series after rendered MIA vs. Ohio State, and should have caught a deep ball (not his fault) for big yards against Maryland (more on this in the QUARTERBACK PLAY section). 13- KeAndre Lambert-Smith started at WR, but didn’t have an impact and seemed to lose snaps to 11-Daniel George in the 2nd half. Redshirt freshman tight end 86-Brenton Strange caught his second and third passes of the season this game.

At running back, the true freshmen are back, and one of them – 26-Caziah Holmes – should be here to stay. Yeah, he only ran for 29 yards on 9 carries, but we’re still going to wave the youngster’s banner because of the obvious burst, vision and instincts seen on the select plays we plucked and put in this montage below:

RUN/PASS BLOCKING

The word “Bad” has a lot of synonyms: 

Dreadful. Awful. Terrible. Second-Rate. Third-Rate. Laughable. Abysmal.  Deplorable. Pitiful. Abominable. Shoddy. Atrocious. Crummy. Rotten. Godawful. Disgraceful. And on, and on, and on.  It’s quite a list…and yet it still isn’t long enough for us not to repeat words when describing Penn State’s offensive line on Saturday. 

Run Blocking – Dreadful:

Pass Protection – Abysmal: 

Discipline – Atrocious. False starts on two straight plays with no crowd noise?!?! Come on:

We’re going to show a few more plays, but no one on the offensive line should go without criticism this week. Not one player graded out as a PLUS in the run game, which shouldn’t be shocking when you gain 94 yards on 36 carries against a Maryland defense that let football factories Northwestern and Minnesota rack up 325 rush yards and 262 rush yards, respectively.

The play that best exemplifies Penn State’s laughable run blocking occurred late in the 3rd Quarter. It’s 2nd and 3 near midfield…and surprisingly, a lot of things go right on this run play. 73-Miranda (+2 on this play) performs a decent block on Maryland DT 91-Almosse Titi (HA! Titi) that 62-Menet cleans up and finishes 5 yards downfield. Miranda then makes a great second level block on the Terps LB, which should let 28-Ford get the edge and pick up 10-15 yards at the worst…except Ford never gets the edge.

Why? Well… 

53-Walker is 6-foot-6 and 310 pounds. 

Maryland linebacker 19-Ahmad McCullough is LISTED at 6-foot-1 and 216 pounds. And yet, Walker is ABSOLUTELY manhandled here, thus blowing up a sure 1st down and effectively ending Penn State’s drive. Little shouldn’t own Big like this…but it did all dang day in the trenches.  

According to our count – which includes 2-pt plays, plays negated by penalties, sacks, and QB scrambles when the initial intent was to pass – Sean Clifford dropped back 76 times on Saturday.  On 53 of those plays, he had a clean pocket. On 23 plays he didn’t. Percentage-wise that’s 69.7% Clean Pocket – slightly better than the 65% vs. Ohio State but way off the 80% posted against Indiana. 

QUARTERBACK PLAY

Buckle up, kids. We’re in for a bumpy ride. 

*Chart doesn’t include 4 Throwaways/Batted Balls but does include 2-pt. attempts and plays negated by penalties.

Not sure if this makes sense, but we have a very high threshold when labeling throws as “Easy Throws” – meaning a lot of what we peg as Moderate Throws are probably Easy Throws to other people looking at the same tape. Therefore, OUR Easy Throws are REALLY freaking easy. They’re layups on an 8-foot rim. They’re the Free Space in Bingo. They’re some other analogy I can’t quite think of right now.  

So it’s inexcusable for Sean Clifford to only be accurate on 55.6 percent of those tosses. 

For example: 

Easy Route. Easy throw. Clear passing window. PUT IT ON HIM, CLIFF! 

After watching and re-watching Clifford for three weeks now, we’ve noticed how uncomfortable he looks inside both 20-yard-lines. The wayward pass you just watched is one example. Clifford’s airmailed INT to Freiermuth (his second INT vs. Indiana) is another example. The shadow of the goalposts seems to amplify Clifford’s bad habits, and that’s got to be fixed if he plans on staying QB1. 

Same issues inside the Red Zone. 

Thirteenth play of the opening drive. 3rd and 6:

For as much as we’ll complain about Penn State’s wide receivers NOT getting open in the next section, that’s not the problem here. Look at Parker Washington! GREAT hesitation step creating separation against man coverage on a crossing route. And for as much as I bashed the O-Line earlier, here they do a fantastic job. 

SO WHY DOES CLIFFORD BAIL??!?!?!?

Washington is open for a cakewalk TD, but Clifford can’t get him the ball because he’s running from invisible defenders for no good reason! 

Clifford also hasn’t made many (if any) strides working through progressions. 

Again, tons of time. But there’s a lot of unnecessary, antsy movement – almost like Clifford is standing in front of a bubble-gum-patched dam – making it hard for the redshirt junior to reset when/if something pops open. Well, 85-Lutz is open. WIDE OPEN. But Clifford never spots him.

Clifford made some really poor reads in the running game, too. It almost seems like he’s either guessing or determines whether he’s going to give or pull before the ball is even snapped. Otherwise, why would he keep on this Zone Read when the read defender doesn’t crash?

Mental processing, not talent, seems to be Clifford’s weakness. Like here, you got 3rd and 1. Nine Maryland players in the box. Eight-man protection. The shot to take is 3-Washington one-on-one on the Go Route. Let your guy go make a play, and if it doesn’t work out, it’s still 4th and 1.

But Clifford doesn’t pull the trigger on the throw…or the throwaway.    

PASS CATCHING

Enjoy dessert first – this sweet and delicious montage of mostly garbage time 50/50 balls Jahan Dotson and Parker Washington turned into 100/0 balls – because afterwards it’s nothing but a side of lima beans for the rest of the scout when it comes to Penn State’s WRs.  

Done yet? Good. Now let’s get critical. 

*Chart does not include 14 Uncatchable Passes but Does Include Receptions on Plays Negated by Penalties.

Yes, Sean Clifford isn’t playing well. And yes, there have been a few cool catches that look awesome when shown without context on social media. But, this entire unit needs to do WAY more to help out Clifford or whoever replaces him. 

I wish we could get our hands on All-22 of this game, because according to guys like Matt Millen and PSU beat reporters’ Twitter feeds, the pass-catchers aren’t regularly getting open. One of two explanations for that. 1. Penn State’s receivers are talent-deficient. 2. Ciarrocca’s route concepts are predictable and elementary. 

On this play, however, there is no problem. 5-Dotson is wide open. Clifford just misses him…or does he?   

Clifford recognizes man coverage pre-snap, so he correctly throws to his most favorable matchup – WR1 in the slot lined up against a true freshman, 12-Tarheeb Still. 

Clean release by Dotson. He’s won the route (a corner route) in the first few steps. All he has to do is turn over his left shoulder to look back at the ball, thus keeping his back between Still and Clifford’s landing pad – the upper left tip of the ‘P’ in Penn State.

Yet, Dotson looks over his right shoulder – bringing the beaten defender back into the play. Clifford puts the ball where Dotson SHOULD be (we called this an accurate pass in our scouting) but the budding star never gets there because he’s got to flip around in the opposite direction. 

Poor route on what should have been an easy touchdown. Not Clifford’s fault.