Sponsor: For The Blogy’s Spring Practice coverage is sponsored by FANATICS. Need new Nittany Lions gear for the Blue-White Game in three weeks? Look no further than our collection of Penn State jerseys, T-shirts, and more right HERE.

Introduction

For years now, broadcasters and other football pundits have stressed the importance of converting Red Zone opportunities into points, especially touchdowns. But rarely is a word uttered about how well teams score on explosive, home run chunk plays from OUTSIDE the Red Zone…which doesn’t make a ton of sense considering evolution of modern quick-strike offensive football.

In analytic circles, measuring an offense’s explosivity has become an often used metric when evaluating college offenses. Until now, measuring a team’s explosivity has consisted of a combination of points per play and yards per play and while I believe that is a good indicator of explosivity, it is also somewhat incomplete.

So today we’re introducing a new metric to assess explosivity – Touchdowns Out of the Red Zone (TORZ or as it’s sometimes labeled in the graphs, TD-PORZ). TORZ is as simple as it sounds — take a team’s total TDs, subtract the number of red zone touchdowns scored, and multiply by 7. This gives us the total TORZ for the season. From there, we divide that number by the number of games played to give us our final metric.

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There will be a lot of Penn State players on the field and coaches on the sideline with a lot to prove this fall.

Perhaps none more than Mike Yurcich.

A year ago, just as many Penn State fans (if not several more) worried that State College would be a mere pit stop for Yurcich en route to a major head coaching job as those who worried that he might not be able to tighten up what had been a talented but inconsistent Nittany Lion offense in 2020. After an encouraging start to the season during which Penn State was carried most often by its defense, the wheels wobbled and spun off, the team dropping six of its final eight contests. Coaches and players from offense, defense and special teams shared responsibility for that, but the offense was undoubtedly the biggest disappointment, with some ugly stats that matched the failed eye test.

Penn State finished 80th or worse in the nation in rushing offense (118th), total offense (82nd), red-zone offense (97th) and scoring offense (90th) last season, stats that harkened back to the early sanction days.

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In the Span of 12 Months, the Penn State Pass Rusher Went From Surefire Starter/Budding Star on the Edge to Almost an Afterthought Coming Back From Injury This Spring. It’s About Time We Get Reacquainted, Don’tcha Think?

Sponsor: For The Blogy’s Spring Practice coverage is sponsored by FANATICS. Need new Nittany Lions gear for the Blue-White Game in three weeks? Look no further than our collection of Penn State jerseys, T-shirts, and more right HERE.

Background

At 6-foot-4 and 244 pounds, returning Penn State pass rusher Adisa Isaac is a classic “tweener” — tall but short-armed, lean even for a 4-3 DE. Probably projects in the NFL as a 3-4 OLB (I happen to know the Steelers’ Alex Highsmith is 6’4/242) so Isaac may eventually need to get comfortable playing backwards (in coverage) on roughly 10-20% of his snaps at the next level. Assuming Manny Diaz’s defensive system doesn’t deviate too far from what we saw from Brent Pry the past 6 seasons, Isaac won’t have many opportunities to show that facet of his game this season or next.

As a senior in high school, Isaac was the consensus No. 1 recruit out of the state of New York in 2018. He recorded 25 sacks (that’s twenty, and then five more) during his final season at the prep level, shattering both school and league records.

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Wherever his long and eventful coaching career may take him, James Franklin owes Bill O’Brien a debt of gratitude.

Not for deciding on New Year’s Eve 2013 to leave Penn State for the Houston Texans. Not for leaving the program in pretty damn good stead, all things considered, after the punitive measures the NCAA had laid on it 17 months before that.

No, Franklin should thank O’Brien for the simple fact that no one wants to be the guy AFTER The Guy, and that O’Brien’s brief but memorable tenure allowed Franklin to avoid having to directly follow the winningest Division I-A coach of all time.

Even if O’Brien couldn’t quite help him escape the inevitable comparisons to Joe Paterno altogether.

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Editor’s Note: Every Monday Evening From Now Until the End of Spring Ball, FTB Unpacks All the Interesting/Unique/Quirky Play Calls We Saw During Mike Yurcich’s 1^st Season as the Nittany Lions’ OC

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Shoehorned in the southwest corner of Beaver Stadium – a space that prior to 2000-2001 renovations was nothing more than a poorly-guarded corral of riding lawn mowers — the Penn State All-Sports Museum is a must-stop for any Nittany Lions fan looking to kill a few hours on a Football Weekend Friday.

This place has got everything: large pictures of James Franklin, small pictures of Bill O’Brien, a weighted dummy for lifting in the wrestling section to remind you how weak you are next to a scale (for some reason) to remind you how fat you are, a bench chair from Rene Portland’s embarrassing blowout loss in the 2000 Women’s Final Four, bowl trophies, useless trivia, John Cappelletti’s Heisman, and enough interactive touchscreens to keep Clorox stock (NYSE: CLX) viable in a volatile market.

Oh, almost forgot…the All-Sports Museum also contains former Penn State coach Rip Engle’s offensive playbook from the 1950s, a cool nugget current OC Mike Yurcich shared with beat reporters on a Zoom press conference last October. The way Yurcich spun the anecdote made it sound like museum curators let him thumb through Engle’s playbook, because inside of it he was shocked to find a shovel pass concept from 70 years ago that 100 percent mirrored his own.

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It’s March 27 and Penn State is just about a full week into spring practice.

Too early to write about the quarterbacks?

Naaaaahhhhh.

We’ll start this piece with a caveat: It is very likely, given how tough it is for a true freshman quarterback to get up to Division I speed, James Franklin’s lengthy history of favoring the incumbent, and Sean Clifford’s enormity of experience as the incumbent, that Clifford will start every game and play the vast majority of the reps this season should he, the good Lord willing and Spring Creek don’t rise, stay healthy.

That said, let’s talk through a few scenarios that are less likely but – as are most things in college football – quite possible, and explore the pros and cons of Penn State rolling with a known or an unknown at the game’s most important position this fall.

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Introduction

In Part 1 of our introduction to Manny Diaz, we used basic and advanced metrics to outline what immediate statistical impact he’s delivered in Year 1 as defensive coordinator throughout various stops in his coaching career.

Today, we’re gonna put Diaz’s body of work under a different microscope lens and compare how his teams have performed vs. past Penn State defenses and FBS defenses, at large. Coach Diaz has served as Defensive Coordinator or Head Coach in FBS since 2010 (2010 and 2015 Mississippi State, 2011-2013 Texas, 2014 Louisiana Tech, 2016-2021 Miami) and has commanded groups that have been above average in virtually every category in every year. But how did he stack up against Penn State – a program that has some incredible defenses and legendary players in the last decade-plus? How much should we temper our expectations (or not)?

Let’s find out…

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