How Will Penn State’s Standout Sophomores Open Up Mike Yurcich’s Playbook?

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.

And while there has been some strategic overlap between what Yurcich DID elsewhere, and what he’s DONE thus far at Penn State…in hindsight, we wasted a lot of our time and your time (sorry). Because what we didn’t know then – but fully grasp now – is that Yurcich is way more malleable than we thought. Not to get all Miss Lippy from Billy Madison on you but, it turns out, Yurcich’s offense is like water in that it’ll take the shape of its surroundings.

So now that the situation in Penn State’s backfield has seismically shifted this offseason – OUT: Experienced but erratic QB. IN: Rocket-armed, 5-star, sugary-cereal spokesman who hasn’t started a game. OUT: Two talented but green true freshmen pups toting the ball. IN: Two talented, mature, complementary backs (a year older, a year wiser) set to snatch souls in 2023 – how will Yurcich re-tailor his attack, and what conceptual ‘blasts from the past’ from Okie State or Austin might re-enter the equation?

The answer: Heck if we know…

…but we got some guesses.

Allar-Centric Passing Concepts  

When you have a thrower like Allar, a QB equipped with a Henry Rowengartner (super contemporary reference) arm, the obvious benefit is that it enables an offense to stress defenses vertically, opening up underneath routes and running lanes thanks to the ever-present fear of getting torched deep. What’s seldom mentioned, however, is that same flamethrower also brings the entire width of the field into play, forcing DBs and linebackers to cover goalpost to goalpost AND sideline to sideline.

But how does an OC utilize this to the offense’s advantage? One way has been a hot topic across CFB this offseason: Wide Splits. Tennessee, the nation’s #1 offense last season, lived in this world. So did Yurcich at Oklahoma State. Formations like this (below) with receivers residing in different zip codes, galaxies away from the center, were nearly an every-down occurrence.

The genius of using Wide Splits is that no matter what coverage the defense has called, aligning a wide-out a yard from the sideline and the ‘slot’ outside the hash creates natural 1-on-1 matchups. Case in point…here’s the actual video from the screengrab posted last paragraph, a lethal slot option concept.

So why don’t all teams do this? Why weren’t Penn State’s receivers regularly hugging the sidelines pre-snap last year and the year before? Well, unfortunately, your QB needs to be able to routinely throw Go and Stop routes to the far side of the field on a rope.

Though Sean Clifford’s arm talent met the standards necessary to cash an NFL paycheck, it wasn’t elite enough for Yurcich to do anything more than dabble in Wide Split formations with the Big Red/Ginger Dog in command. In fact, the lone concept Penn State ran out of exaggerated Wide Splits last year was this mirrored two-man vertical switch route to both the field and boundary.

Furthermore, Yurcich tended to call Switch in ‘22 when he knew they’d be able to get the in-breaker to the X or Z receiver — a much easier but still incredibly effective throw for Clifford, as you’ll see in these next two clips. With Allar’s arm, Yurcich won’t have to be as restrictive when lined up in Wide Splits.

Another way Yurcich might look to utilize Wide Splits is isolating a single receiver through RPO. A potential formation + play can look something like this:

The lone WR can be tagged any route from slant/glance to curl or hitch vs. a soft cushion CB. The read for Allar would be simple: the only way the defense would be able to stop (on paper) an in-breaking route would be to bracket the WR with the weak safety or overhang LB, meaning they’d provide inside help to the CB who plays with outside leverage. If the wideout gets bracketed at the snap, Allar hands the ball to the RB on the run concept of their choosing and the defense has one less defender in the run-fit.

Other than aligning receivers on N. Atherton by the old Eat n’ Park near the Walmart, there are other non-Wide Split offensive schematics that will play to QB Drew Allar’s strengths.

The next one, and most promising in my eyes, is Allar’s ability to execute “pure progression” passing concepts. This is where a QB’s first read is on either the far left or far right and the entire progression cycles fully left to right or right to left, respectively. The sophomore QB showed us a flawless example of this in the spring game.

Some QBs struggle aligning their feet/shoulders/eyes with their target as they get to their backside reads. Allar shows decisiveness and poise as he scans the field. From common Y-Cross, Levels, and Drive concepts, Yurcich can get very creative with how he designs his drop back pass game in ‘23.

Lastly, and most elementary, Drew Allar’s arm strength and deep ball accuracy will lead to plenty more throws totaling 20+ air yards – a pillar of Mike Yurcich’s video-game Oklahoma State offenses that somehow got lost in the move to State College.

Despite having Jahan Dotson and Parker Washington at the ready, Clifford failed to consistently pop the top off the Jack-in-the-Box like Mason Rudolph and 2018 Okie State starter/current Edmonton Elks backup Tyler Cornelius did.  Allar should correct that…especially with an exceptional run game, we can expect safeties to get very nosey and Yurcich to counter that by max protecting and letting speedy WRs be speedy and letting Allar out-throw coverage.

In 2022, “shot plays” accounted for just 7.4% of Penn State’s total dropbacks. Expect that percentage to tick up. Here are some common “shot play” concepts PSU used last year:

Nick & The Fatman Split-Back Formation

If this video snippet from a recent August practice of Penn State repping a triple-option RPO from a split back alignment sans fullback/H-back is any indication, then THIS (below) could very well be Mike Yurcich’s answer when torn on which star sophomore running back to stick on the field.

Porque no los dos, indeed.

In 2022, Penn State did not use a true 20 personnel (two running backs, no tight ends) once…which is a bit perplexing when your stud freshmen ball-carriers, Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen, combine for 1,928 and 22 touchdowns. Rummaging through old film we’d like to forget from 2021, though, we discovered a handful of instances where Yurcich used two running backs in a split-back formation – where the backs sidecar (verb) the QB in the backfield – although in every rep, 28-Devyn Ford was nothing more than a blocker.

HOWEVEEEEER…after more rummaging we struck gold and found examples of Yurcich’s utilizing two-back sorcery at Oklahoma State with a young 30-Chuba Hubbard, an old 5-Justice Hill and some dude wearing No. 27 wrecking Texas on a Saturday night in Stillwater. On paper, the beauty of split-back is that offenses can attack the strong and weak side of the formation with equal effectiveness — similar to Penn State’s T Formation. But, as you’re about to see in this blog post-ending, rapid-fire clip barrage, that run-game duality is just the tip of the split-back iceberg. Buckle up.

We got RPOs…

We got play-action passes that bait the D by giving the same look as the previous RPO…

We got QB Reads with a lead blocker…

More RPOs…

Much like his use of Formation Into The Boundary alignments (which we outlined last week),Yurcich loves to run split-back stuff with a lead foot cemented to the pedal – ramping up the tempo to 11. All-22 doesn’t really do this meep-meep pace justice, so instead here’s the unedited TV clip of Yurcich’s hurried split-back onslaught.