If At First You Don’t Succeed

In hiring – and firing – Mike Yurcich, James Franklin demonstrated commendable willingness to take bold action, but the pressure is on to get the next move right.

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

*Please remember to click the ‘Share My Address With For The Blogy’ box when checking out so we know where to mail your gift!

For proof of the critical importance assistant coaches play at elite college football programs, you needed only to look to the opposing sidelines at Beaver Stadium in the game that ultimately cost now-former Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich his job.

The latest ludicrous turn of this largely ridiculous Michigan sign-stealing saga saw the Big Ten hand down an 11^th-hour suspension for Jim Harbaugh while the Wolverines’ team flight was en route to State College. A legal Hail Mary by Michigan failed to yield a stay of execution, so the nation’s third-ranked team took on by far their stiffest test of the season without their head coach – insert joke about James Franklin getting outcoached by a team without a coach. But therein lies the point.

Saturday began Michigan’s second stint playing games without Harbaugh after he served out a school-imposed three-game suspension to start the year, and neither time has his absence disrupted the team’s collision course with the playoffs. Current allegations aside, Harbaugh has clearly done a good enough job building a culture and setting a standard that now, even in the stretch run of the title hunt, he can comfortably hand the keys to his assistants and the machine keeps humming. It offers a painfully instructive reminder of why James Franklin makes aggressive moves in pursuit of upgrading his staff.

College head coaches need to wear so many hats, especially at top-15 programs, and often the CEO role leaves execution of the grand vision to middle management. The head coach sets the tone and makes the biggest decisions, while the nuts and bolts of talent development and gameday execution inevitably fall to those with a narrower focus, making those who fill those positions critical to overall success. Almost without exception, the ranks of the playoff frequent flyers that Penn State fans dream about their own team joining, the consensus “elite,” all boast a staff packed with exceptional position coaches and superior coordinators. Yes, you need to have the right man at the top, but he won’t lead you to the promised land without a group of complementary subordinates.

Already, much is being made of Franklin having cycled through five (soon to be six) offensive coordinators during his time in Happy Valley. This strikes me as a little unfair; employing coaches who are sought after for promotions by other programs (Joe Moorhead, Ricky Rahne) is typically framed as a sign of strength, and I don’t know how you can honestly criticize Penn State’s offense for underperforming and wasting talent and then also find fault with the head coach for making changes to the offensive staff in search of improvement. Pick a direction and go.

Good leaders develop a feel for when to invest and when to cut bait. A mentor of mine at Penn State who had tremendous professional success used to preach about the virtue of moving on quickly from underperforming personnel, and he warned against overemphasizing retention rates when judging management acumen. Those in positions of authority are going to make many hires, and despite their best efforts, not all of them are going to pan out. Sometimes a candidate can seem like the perfect fit, possess desirable qualities and genuine talent, and still not work out for a variety of reasons. Knowing this, we ought to be more forgiving when our leaders decide to change course and in fact applaud when they avoid the urge to stubbornly double down on bad situations. Experimentation will involve some instructive failures, and we ought to allow some flexibility for trying new things and moving on when necessary.

In that spirit, it is important to remember that Mike Yurcich was not a “bad” hire, far from it. After being plucked from PSAC anonymity by Mike Gundy, he went on to coordinate some of the nation’s most diverse and potent offenses at Oklahoma State. His run of success in Stillwater saw him poached by premiere programs in consecutive years at Ohio State and then Texas, where a coaching change saw him hit the market as one of the best regarded offensive minds in college football. That’s when James Franklin saw the opportunity to upgrade his staff and seized it, firing Kirk Ciarrocca after only one season to make the hire. If anything, we should be encouraged that Franklin recognizes the importance of top-tier coordinators to reaching the program’s ultimate goals and will push to bring them to Penn State.

A move like this does not come spur of the moment. Yurcich’s termination represents a culmination of several factors that have been building over his years in Happy Valley and the weeks of this season. Struggles in big games, lack of an offensive identity, puzzling playcalls, failure to develop blue chip talent, and mounting pressure from fans, boosters, and a supportive, but demanding new administration all factored into Franklin’s decision to make this move. However, one series from Saturday afternoon captures the essence of why it was time for a change: Trailing 7-3 early in the second quarter, Penn State opened with a nine-yard run from Kaytron Allen on first down. The next play, a screen to depth receiver Malick Meiga, lost a yard. Five-star passer Drew Allar ran for a yard on third, and the Lions punted. Senseless.

The entropic nature of that three-play sequence, which saw State’s offense spin gold into straw by abandoning what was working to tinker around with what wasn’t, embodies the strange three years of the Mike Yurcich Experience in Happy Valley. His first season featured arguably Penn State’s worst rushing offense in at least 35 years, with numbers that compared only to the miserable three- and four-win teams of the Dark Years and 65-scholarship sanctioned teams of the mid-2010s (not favorable comparisons for a squad that reached number four in the nation). While production increased markedly in the ensuing years, Penn State’s impotency in four games against Ohio State and Michigan, particularly in this season of blighted hopes, sealed Yurcich’s fate. The rewards at the sport’s highest level are richer, but the margins for error shrink considerably, leaving little breathing room even for the very talented.

So James Franklin made the right move; some would suggest it was probably also the smart (and only?) option in terms of his own enlightened self-preservation. Mike Yurcich was brought to Penn State for two games on this year’s schedule. In those games, the Nittany Lions scored a total of 25 points, converted only five times on third downs, and lost both times. His offenses, which rolled out half-baked trick plays with bizarre regularity, never seemed to find a rhythm, and the five-star quarterback he helped recruit to campus has regressed in his first year as a starter. He categorically failed when it mattered most, and those failures did him in.

All of this may still come as a bit of a shock to the system for long-time fans, who remember a time when assistants literally spent decades on staff, some bringing valuable continuity and stability, others just collecting a paycheck. But this is the game we are playing now, and in large part, we are playing it by the same rules as everybody else. Still, old habits die hard. Penn State has never been a cutthroat place where an imperative to win brings an itchy trigger finger (we have yet to fire a head football coach for performance), and so it shall remain. Disgruntled fans hoping the University’s leadership will take a cue from Texas A&M and eat an eight-figure buyout can keep dreaming. James Franklin, for all his many positive qualities as well as his by-now obvious shortcomings, remains entrenched as the program’s CEO. The choices about what comes next are his to make.

The decision to hire — and fire — Mike Yurcich tells us at least that he will not shy away from taking bold action. But after failing to make it work with his top choice for the job, his latitude to make another misjudgment has all but evaporated. The course of Penn State football and of James Franklin’s career both hang on the replacement he chooses. He cannot afford to miss again.