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For The Blogy - A New Look at the Penn State Nittany Lions
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    • 2024 Recruiting Board
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2022 Spring Practice

Sunday Column: The Marketing Matches Made in Heaven Are Limitless for Penn State Athletes

Any quarterback worth his salt knows how to see the whole field. So it should not have been much of a surprise that Penn State’s Sean Clifford – who has been reading defenses for nearly 40 games over the past four years – has been keeping his eye on perhaps the most significant development in collegiate athletics. Clifford recently announced a company he formed, Limitless NIL, that will help his fellow student athletes navigate the still-being-charted waters of name, image, and likeness.

In addition to providing each of its clients with sound financial advice from partner agency Beacon Pointe, the Limitless team also says on its website that it will work with athletes to pair them “with companies that align with (their) brand.” One such example is that of Penn State safety Ji’Ayir “Tig” Brown, who will have his own “Tig Pie” at State College’s Snap Custom Pizza.

That got us thinking about a few hypothetical (but not entirely unrealistic) athlete-sponsor fits that would simply be too good to pass up. You’re welcome, Nittany Lions.

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April 16, 2022by FTB Jeff
Podcast

FTB on KSN: Measuring Penn State’s Explosivity on Offense

April 16, 2022by FTB Staff
FTB Film Study

Why Penn State Safety Jaquan Brisker is a 1st Round Talent

April 10, 2022by FTB Staff
PSU ABC's

Analytics, Basic Stats, and Recent Historic Context: The ABC’s of Penn State Football – A New Metric for Measuring Explosivity: Touchdowns Out of the Red Zone (TORZ)

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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April 10, 2022by FTB Nathan
2022 Spring Practice

Sunday Column: Yurcich Enters Pivotal Year 2 With Plenty to Prove

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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April 9, 2022by FTB Jeff
2022 Spring Practice

Adisa Isaac’s Second Act

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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April 4, 2022by FTB Staff
2022 Spring Practice

Sunday Column: Forget X’s and O’s … Let’s Talk Jimmy (James) vs. Joe

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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April 2, 2022by FTB Jeff
FTB Throwback

“Tecmo For The Blogy Bowl” Video Game Commercial – 1991

April 1, 2022by FTB Staff
Podcast

FTB on KSN: Penn State DC Manny Diaz Secondary Schemes

March 30, 2022by FTB Staff
2022 Spring Practice

Inside Penn State’s Playbook: T Formation

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 1st Season as the Nittany Lions’ OC

Sponsor: Join our 2022 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. 

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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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March 28, 2022by FTB Bill
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