Sponsor: Looking for the perfect stocking stuffer? Look no further! Join our 2021 FTB Donors Club – the best way for you to show your support and keep this train rolling – and receive an exclusive FTB zipper bottle Koozie as a gift! Sign up 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!

Introduction

In what might be the understatement of all understatements, Penn State’s rushing attack really struggled throughout 2021.

Like, really struggled.

Didn’t matter who carried the ball – Noah Cain, Keyvone Lee, John Lovett, Devyn Ford – or when they carried the ball for that matter – 1^st down, 3^rd down, garbage time, high-leverage situations – the Nittany Lions lack of consistency on the ground diluted the potency of Mike Yurcich’s offense as promising drive after promising drive suddenly stalled thanks to a barrage of bottlenecks at the LOS.

But, we wondered, just HOW bad was the Blue and White’s 2021 run production with respect to the rest of the FBS and Penn State’s historical averages? The masochist in us wants to know…so that’s where we’ll begin our after-season analytics investigation of the 2021 Penn State Nittany Lions.

Continue reading

If only James Franklin developed offensive linemen as well as he develops head coaches.

Brent Pry, Franklin’s long-time right-hand man, became the fourth former Franklin assistant to eventually ascend to an FBS head coaching position earlier this week when he accepted the Virginia Tech job, joining Charles Huff (Marshall), Ricky Rahne (Old Dominion), and Joe Moorhead (Mississippi State and, as of Saturday, Akron). It wouldn’t be all that surprising if Josh Gattis, currently the offensive coordinator at Michigan, was added to that list in the next year or two.

So Franklin will do what he’s done pretty well during the last few years — turn to his little black book of coaching names and try to find a new assistant (if he decides not to promote from within). And while replacing the underrated Pry will be more difficult than many Penn State fans believe, it is an opportunity to both add some new life to a coaching staff that could use a spark or two and to see if the administration’s commitment to competing with the nation’s best (put a better way: its willingness to hand over a blank check) is indeed a result of Franklin’s princely contract extension.

Franklin will have to navigate the ongoing college and NFL seasons as he searches for this new hire, but it’s likely he had a few ideas in mind even before he knew Pry was leaving. He will likely want someone with a proven track record of leading a defense, who can quickly get both players and fellow coaches to learn his system and who is able to adapt his system not only to each opponent leading up to the game but, more importantly, adapt once the game is underway.

Continue reading

Sponsor: Looking for the perfect stocking stuffer? Look no further! Join our 2021 FTB Donors Club – the best way for you to show your support and keep this train rolling – and receive an exclusive FTB zipper bottle Koozie as a gift! Sign up 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!

Introduction

For you Glass-Half-Fullers out there, the Penn State Nittany Lions finished the 2021 regular season with a winning record, which is something we couldn’t say at the end of last year. That’s the good. But for you Glass-Half-Empty Sky Screamers, the fact that the Nittany Lions slipped on several banana peels (starting roughly around the 10-minute mark of the 2^nd Quarter vs. Iowa) while stumbling across the finish line was hard to swallow and will leave an unpleasant aftertaste for the next 9 months. From 5-0 and No. 4 in the country to 2-5 in the last 7 and a non-New Year’s Day bowl participant. That’s the bad. Issues abound on both sides of the ball – issues we’ll have plenty of time to talk about in February and March as we wait for the snow to melt.

Today, though, let’s focus on the debacle in East Lansing. After gifting Michigan State a quick 14-point lead, the Lions fought back to take the lead before literally fumbling it away. Toss in an uncharacteristically poor defensive performance, missed kicks, and a complete lack of a running game and you have a recipe for disaster. Post-Pick-6 until about 2-minutes left in the 4^th, the wheels fell off and a season that blossomed with so much promise and hope cruelly wilted in the arms of Spartans WR Jayden Reed during a rather nonthreatening onside kick attempt.

Continue reading

In the grand scheme of things, this one didn’t mean anything. Penn State said as much on Tuesday, when it locked up James Franklin for 10 more years even though his team had dropped nine games in the previous 12-plus months.

Win, lose or tie, the Nittany Lions’ coaching future was set long before they kicked off one of the snowier games you’ll see against yet another ranked opponent, their sixth of the year. So, considering the outcome wouldn’t really affect anything other than which lower-tiered bowl destination was in Penn State’s future, there was no reason for anyone to get too worked up about the result, right?

Well …

Once again, this flawed but feisty team did just enough to make you believe the game was in its grasp while simultaneously failing to get out of its own way at just about every crucial juncture.

Continue reading

If you’re a Penn State fan and you love James Franklin, Tuesday was a great day.

If you’re a Penn State fan and you’ve had your fill of James Franklin, it was a pretty good day, too.

The university announced a handsome contract extension for the Nittany Lions’ eight-year football coach that will keep him — barring buyout — with the program through the 2031 season, a not-so-surprising end to a not-so-secretive two-month stretch of negotiations between the coach (OK, his agent, Jimmy Sexton) and the administration.

The obvious upshot is continued or reinforced stability. Penn State, which will be bringing in a new president within the next year, gets to avoid a potentially ugly divorce and a coaching search in a year without a lot of enticing names on the market. Franklin gets to continue to chase a national title in his home state and one of the best (not-yet-signed) recruiting classes the program has collected in some time gets to breathe a little easier, as do the hordes of fans whose sleep quality is strongly proportional to those recruits’ decisions.

Continue reading

Sponsor: Hey, it’s us! For The Blogy! Join our 2021 FTB Donors Club – the best way for you to show your support and keep this train rolling – and receive an exclusive FTB zipper bottle Koozie as a gift! Sign up 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!

Introduction

Yes, I know it was Rutgers. And, yes, I know that Rutgers is Rutgers. But don’t rain on my parade, man. During a season that started out sweet, devolved into sour, and no matter what happens next Saturday will be tough to swallow in the end, Penn State’s 28-0 blanking of the Scarlet Knights in the home finale was oddly satisfying. The Nittany Lions defense totally dominated the overmatched Rutgers offense while, on the other side of the ball, a true freshman QB provided a much needed shot in the arm (pun intended) against a not-so-bad Rutgers defense. The team — not just one particular unit –played well in a performance that had us thinking back to the better days of September and early October.

Continue reading

With all of the exuberance and, dare we say, catharsis surrounding Penn State’s maple-flavored second-half offensive explosion on Saturday, it was easy to forget that the Nittany Lions punted on eight of their first nine possessions against Rutgers.

A short-handed and virus-plagued unit wasn’t faring much better than the inconsistent, sniffle-free offense that had taken the field in Penn State’s first 10 games, and yet, even though Jordan Stout was getting far more first-half touches than Jahan Dotson, the Nittany Lions were in no danger of falling behind an inferior opponent because their defense was, once again, completely in charge.

Right now, a decent chunk of Penn State fans (and maybe, not-so-very deep down, some of the Nittany Lions themselves) are playing a tortuous “What if?” game, and swapping scrappy rookie QB Christian Veilleux in for an ineffective Ta’Quan Roberson and/or a not-at-100% Sean Clifford at a few key junctures over the last month, if only in their imaginations. Would the Nittany Lions have one more win? Two more? Three more? Fou…

…well, even fantasies have their limits.

Continue reading