Inside Penn State’s Playbook: ‘Fight Song’

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With 11:25 remaining and Penn State clinging to a precarious 1-point lead over Auburn, life imitated Electronic Arts.

If the design of Brenton Strange’s slow-footed trot to the 2 – arguably the funkiest play in a Barnum & Bailey three-ring Whiteout that had failed fat-man fake punts, phantom Intentional Groundings, and a down that POOF vanished into thin air — looked familiar in the moment, well then there’s a good chance that you, like us, wasted too many days playing EA’s old NCAA Football video game franchise.

Indeed, “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game.”

While not a complete X’s and O’s facsimile, the conceptual DNA of Mike Yurcich’s rabbit-out-of-the-hat call in Penn State’s 28-20 triumph over Auburn can also be found — ironically enough – in Auburn’s video game playbook from NCAA Football 2012, Gus Malzahn’s final season as the Tigers’ offensive coordinator before he became head coach two years later.

It’s called ‘Fight Song.’

So what makes this play so difficult to defend? One word: deception.

At first glance, Fight Song doesn’t appear to be exotic, at all. Empty Set. Pair of vertical routes to the boundary. Trips to the field with an Out, a Screen, and a Go. Nothing to it, right? Wrong. Because while the optics of this formation might not sound off any alarms, Fight Song’s peculiar player alignment challenges defenders’ mental aptitude as they try to figure out who’s eligible and who’s not during a point in the game – the 4^th quarter – when they’re running on fumes physically.

Here’s Yurcich’s ‘Fight Song’ design:

And here’s the All-22 of the play, again:

Follow along with us: The traditional left tackle, 53-Rasheed Walker, bumps inside, neighboring the center. The left guard, 68-Eric Wilson, flip-flops and lines up where the right guard normally lines up, thus bumping the traditional right guard, 70-Juice Scruggs, two spots away from the ball because the traditional right tackle, 323-pound Caedan Wallace, is a whale out of water, split wide like a receiver even though he’s not an eligible pass catcher.

The tight end – 86-Strange, lined up where the left tackle normally dwells – IS ELIGIBLE as long as the two boundary receivers set up off the line of scrimmage. Those two guys – 3-Parker Washington and 8-Marquis Wilson on this play – run a tunnel screen concept, which is the quarterback’s second of two reads in Yurcich’s version of ‘Fight Song.’ 13-KeAndre Lambert-Smith isn’t part of the concept. Neither is 10-John Lovett (at least from a pass-catching standpoint, anyway) but he does need to run interference by getting vertical in a hurry, thus diverting the linebacker and single-high safety’s eyes away from 86-Strange.

Assuming the defense is in an disadvantageous formation – like Auburn’s Cover 1 look here – and doesn’t instantly spot the offense’s sleight of hand, tossing the ball to the tight end should be a pre-snap predetermined throw for the QB. If not, hit the screen.

The question then becomes, how do you camouflage such an unorthodox alignment without it being detected?

For Malzahn, the Father of ‘Fight Song’, the answer was simple: Choreographed Chaos. Give the defense something they haven’t seen before and don’t give them time to figure it out. For instance, when Auburn successfully pulled off ‘Fight Song’ vs. Ole Miss in 2016, the Tigers seamlessly shifted from a Wing-T look into a five-wide empty set with elite precision and snapped the ball two or three heartbeats later, leaving the tight end unaccounted for, as you’ll see below:

Yurcich’s ‘Fight Song’ set-up this past season against Auburn was actually a two-play process. All-22 cuts out the between play filler, so to truly grasp the brilliance of this sequence, here’s the TV clip:

Prior to this dangerous throwback screen to Lovett, Penn State hadn’t put a true Pistol set on film the entire season, which forced Auburn’s defenders to unscramble this unforeseen formation on the fly. Then, after Lovett moves the chains, Penn State absolutely freakin’ floors it! According to our iPhone stopwatch, a mere 19.6 seconds separate when Lovett’s backside hit the turf from the next snap – choreographed chaos. All of the sudden, you got a DB manning up on Wallace, the boundary safety and corner sucked up defending the tunnel screen, the safety and linebacker shading to cover Lovett, all while Strange runs down the field unchecked.

Unfortunately, Penn State was unable to recreate that same level of confusion three weeks later when Yurcich wiped a thin layer of dust off ‘Fight Song’ and ran it again vs. Iowa. Even though Penn State quickly snaps the ball with 29 seconds left on the play clock, it doesn’t make a difference because the preceding play was a milk toast Ta’Quan Roberson QB draw for minus-3 yards that let the Hawkeyes sit and watch Penn State shift into its exotic alignment.

Notice Iowa cornerback 8-Matt Hankins pointing right at the crouching Wallace, alerting the secondary that’s something’s up. Then, look at Iowa LB 44-Seth Benson relaying info to the safety that 84-Theo Johnson is eligible. Coverage mixed with the lost element of surprise dictates that Roberson throws the screen.