In What’s Becoming an Annual Tradition, Fox 8 New Orleans Sports Reporter/AP Poll Voter/Friend of the Blog Garland Gillen Spoke With FTB About His Preseason Rankings on the Eve of Monday’s Release

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FTB: No need to beat around the bush here…did you rank Penn State?

GG: I actually don’t have them ranked, and it’s largely due to their quarterback play. Not that impressed with a lot of the quarterback play in the Big Ten, to be honest. I know Penn State rebounded from an 0-5 start and finished the second half of the season blazing, but that doesn’t erase a preseason Top 10 team starting 0-5. I think a lot of this season falls on Sean Clifford – when he protected the ball, Penn State won; when he turned the ball over, they lost. So you have a guy who was up-and-down last season, and now the backups aren’t experienced after Will Levis transferred to Kentucky, so that security blanket is gone. I know (James) Franklin is killing it in recruiting, so that bodes well for the future, but obviously those guys are a year away from being on the roster.

Now, with all that said, I have Wisconsin ranked No. 13 in my preseason poll. If Penn State goes to Madison and beats Wisconsin, then yeah they’re in the next week. Firmly in. Nothing is written in stone. After Week 1, my preseason poll could be flipped upside-down. We won’t have to wait long to see where Penn State stands.

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One of the big storylines you’ll hear from TV talking heads or national media concerning Penn State in the coming weeks will be how the Nittany Lions will look to “bounce back” from a 4-5 season or are determined to “take the bad taste out of their mouths” after a 4-5 season, or … insert your well-worn cliché of choice here after a 4-5 season.

Though there is some truth to that – Penn State’s players and coaches are prideful guys, and much of the short-but-sour 2020 season was embarrassing, even if there weren’t many fans around to see it live – you have to wonder how much bouncing back this team will actually have to do this season.

Which is to say, Penn State had a bad record last season, but it wasn’t really a bad team. More like a decent-to-good team that just could not get out of its own way.

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 Thanks to the NCAA Granting Student-Athletes an Eligibility Mulligan in 2020, a Handful of Nittany Lions ‘Super’ Seniors Could Potentially Stick Around for Year 6

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For those unfamiliar with the reference, Van Wilder was the protagonist in a forgettable, low-budget National Lampoon movie about a Peter Pan college undergrad with no ambition to ever leave the ivy-laced utopia of campus life.

As you probably guessed, the film cast an uptight Dad threatening to cut-off Van Wilder’s tuition money, a curmudgeonly Dean searching for excuses to expel this campus king, and included a lot of life lessons learned through copious alcohol consumption at various themed-parties.

If you’re considering spending $3.99 to rent it…don’t.

The point we’re trying to make is that the NCAA’s decision not to count the 2020 football season against players’ collegiate eligibility has given – and will continue to give – prospects on the fringe of getting drafted the option of temporarily curbing life in the Real World for another year of fall football Saturdays.

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Introduction

Shortly after Mike Yurcich’s surprise hire as Penn State’s new offensive coordinator back in January, we used a wide array of basic and advanced stats to examine how well his previous offenses performed and why Nittany Lions fans’ initial excitement for what could be in 2021 was totally justified. Then, a couple of weeks ago, we crunched various numbers to figure out, at this this point in his career, whether Sean Clifford is more Trace McSorley or Christian Hackenberg. 

Today, we’ll sort of morph those two concepts together.

That is, since 2013, how have Yurcich’s quarterbacks performed and what might that portend for Sean Clifford in 2021? Statistically, we’re going to keep it simple, but I think (hope!) there are some nuggets in here that make us optimistic for the season.

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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! 

To all the men and women sequestered in that sauna/storage container on stilts, also known as the Beaver Stadium press box, thank you for your service.

On Saturday, the college football calendar finally got back on schedule when Penn State held its annual early-August Media Day, even though the alterations to this event’s usual minutiae — Zoom-powered press conferences, 1-on-1 interviews done from a six-foot distance behind a plastic white chain  – reminded us that normalcy hasn’t completely returned to the fold. 

But, for a few hours anyway, it was fun to keep refreshing Twitter like it was a mechanical pencil and make way too much of various reporters’ observational notes from the 25 minutes of practice open to the media.

For those of you with a life, and better things to do on a summer Saturday, the martyrs here at FTB rummaged through the cornucopia of clichés and plucked out every enlightening spoken word/observation for you.  You’re welcome.  

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August begins the slow turning of the page from preseason to season, replete with workouts and game plans and live-ball drills and media obligations. It’s the time to put in work without knowing if it’ll pay off in November or even early January.

It’s also a time for unbridled optimism; every team is undefeated, and the fears of coaches and cynical fans have yet to be realized. Everyone sees what could be and is reminded of how much they missed this brutal yet wonderful game.

As James Franklin and Penn State look to put a crazy year behind them, the optimism of August is ripe, even if it doesn’t compare to the optimism the Nittany Lions generated in July.

Last month, Penn State locked down a dozen commitments in a Class of 2022 that is now ranked the best in the nation by the major recruiting sites (and added in a top-40 commitment in the Class of 2023 to boot). That’s a hell of a month by any recruiting standard but almost impossible to believe when you consider that this team WENT 4-5 LAST FALL.

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While Dissecting Mike Yurcich’s Offense, We Left Some Meat on the Bone Related to his Quick-Snap, Hurry-Up Attack…So Enjoy These Leftover Morsels 

Sponsor: 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 a free FTB gift! Sign up HERE. 

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Word of caution for the Lead Directors and Lead Producers stuck in TV trucks outside Beaver Stadium this season: Penn State OC Mike Yurcich and his quick-snap, up-tempo offense aren’t slowing down for your dumb bits.

Sadly, the ESPN crew assigned to broadcast the 2017 Oklahoma State-Pitt seal-clubbing learned this lesson the hard way.

As someone who funds this non-credible written-word sports media enterprise through paychecks from a credible television sports media enterprise, I feel for the poor P.A. making 10 dollars an hour who scrounged up three women’s wigs on short notice after someone on staff thought it’d be brilliant (looking at you, Tom Luginbill) to rock mullets for a segment about Mike Gundy’s hair.

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Former Texas OC Mike Yurcich’s Lone Season in the Lone Star State Resulted in a lot of Points, a Pink Slip, and Perhaps Some Perspective of What to Expect This Season at Penn State. 

Sponsor: 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 a free FTB gift! Sign up HERE. 

If Mike Yurcich is a man of his word – and thus far, we have no reason to believe he’s not – members of Penn State’s keyboard crew (like us) apparently got carte blanche to wildly speculate, spew half-truths and do it while not wearing pants.

Because Penn State’s new offensive coordinator DGAF about any of that…even though his stern, frustrated tone kinda suggests he does.

Confused? Just watch this Yurcich press conference toward the end of last season when the cyber sharks were circling Texas head coach Tom Herman:

Actually, wait…rewind that. Did Yurcich say he COULD care less??!?!?! Ugh, come on, man. So he DOES give a rip about what we type and how clothed we are while typing it? Sigh…well, great. Give us a second to find another noteworthy anecdote from Yurcich’s 51 weeks on Herman’s coaching staff at Texas. 

Let’s see here…

…noteworthy, noteworthy…

…gosh, there’s not much.

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Soooo…What The Heck Is It?!?!? A Deep Dive Into The New Offensive Coordinator’s Trends and Tendencies During Oklahoma State’s Explosive 2017 Season Provides Some Answers But Also More Questions

Sponsor: For The Blogy’s preseason coverage is sponsored by FANATICS. Gear up for College Football season with Nike’s 2021 Penn State sideline collection of polos, t-shirts, hats, pullovers and more right HERE.

*Each FANATICS purchase helps support For The Blogy.

Real ones from Day 1 who bother reading these blog subheads just raised an eyebrow.

The reason?

Well, we plagiarized ourselves. Yep, hand up. Send us to Rick Reilly journalism jail or wherever. Less than 10 months ago, once the Big Ten finally caved to social pressure derived from its own self-righteousness and decided to let their pearls dangle and play football, we published ‘The Kirk Ciarrocca Experience.’ The premise of that blog was to introduce Penn State fans to the new offensive coordinator. The premise of this blog is to introduce Penn State fans to the new offensive coordinator.

So why get cute, ya know? Swap out a few words, slap in a new picture, and keep our fingers crossed ‘The (Insert Name) Experience’ trilogy is years, not months, away. 

This time around, we charted three Mike Yurcich games from 2017: Oklahoma State’s 59-21 depantsing of Pitt, the Cowboys’ back-and-forth, defense-optional 62-52 loss vs. Oklahoma, and OSU’s 50-39 slugfest (well, comparative slugfest) against West Virginia.  

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