Inside Penn State’s Playbook: Evolution of The T Formation
What’s old (like really old) is new again, as Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich’s 2021 flirtation with an antiquated alignment morphed into a full-blown infatuation in 2022.
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Apparently, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit didn’t get the memo.
In the dying breaths of the Rose Bowl’s 1st quarter, beneath a gloomy, outlier Southern California sky that deceased journalistic windbag Grantland Rice would have gushed over in his run-on, 300-word, one-sentence lead in the next day’s newspaper, Penn State lined up in a T Formation for the 27th time this season.
To those who diligently watched every game of Penn State’s bounceback 2022 campaign, this was no big deal – standard operating procedure in short-yardage situations.
And yet — as you’ll hear below if you click the video clip – both veteran announcers sounded absolutely bewildered/befuddled/flustered when the Nittany Lions suddenly whipped out this X’s and O’s antique near the goal line.
Awash in giddiness as they stepped on each other’s words, Fowler and Herbstreit actually misidentified Yurcich’s look. This wasn’t a Wing T because, well, there’s no wingback. It’s a simply a T formation, the oldest offensive formation in American football dating back to its 1882 creation by Walter Camp. Two decades later, once Teddy Roosevelt bullied the college rules committee into legalizing the forward pass, the standard T (also referred to as the Power T or Robust T) that Penn State currently brandishes quickly became outdated, though it did experience a brief revival in the 1940s thanks to the invention of the hand-to-hand QB-center snap.
As we detailed in our original T Formation blog published this time last year, Yurcich ran this relic on just four occasions in 2021. Penn State’s initial 3 calls out of T were what coaches call ‘Blast’ plays – essentially an off-tackle run with two lead blockers emanating out of the backfield. The fourth and final T formation was this 4th down play action touchdown pass to TE 44-Tyler Warren that, honestly, fooled absolutely nobody but did manage to isolate a big body (Warren) on a small body (Michigan CB DJ Turner, 6-feet, 181 pounds).
In 2022, however, Yurcich’s use of the T Formation increased 700% and featured more play-calling diversity, more formational diversity/headaches for opposing DCs thanks to pre-snap shifts, and more per play success. Last season, Penn State’s T Formation snaps averaged 1.5 yards per play and 2 total touchdowns. This year, Penn State’s T Formation snaps averaged 5.43 yards per play resulting in 10 total touchdowns with a 71% success rate.
What’s crazy is that Yurcich’s Manball/Neanderthal formational fossil proved capable of producing explosive plays, most notably these two long-distance TD runs from 10-Nicholas Singleton in Penn State’s 30-0 skunking of Maryland.
And since no good idea goes unborrowed in the sport of football, a sprinkling of coaches on various levels began installing Yurcich’s T into their playbook this season. Our very own Film Study host, coach Nick Codutti of Fulshear High School in suburban Houston, used Yurcich’s T formation to convert two pivotal 4th downs in a late-October, playoff-clinching road win. On a much grander stage, Jacksonville Jaguars coach Doug Pederson injected the T formation back into the National Zeitgeist by dialing up this clutch chunk run that set up a chipshot game-winning kick to punctuate a wild comeback on Wild Card weekend a few weeks ago. Naturally, 99.9% of Twitter lost its collective mind, acting like Pederson unearthed some long-buried time capsule when (as ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky pointed out) all he really did was watch some Yurcich tape.
Jags stole that from Penn State
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) January 15, 2023
Strategy/Philosophy
The beauty of the T Formation is that it’s one of the few formations in football that’s completely symmetrical.
I know what you’re thinking: ‘Yeah, OK, so what?’
Well, the reason why that mirror image alignment matters is that unless the defense also sets up symmetrically, the offense will have a numerical advantage on one side or the other.
Take a second, scroll back up, and rewatch the Nicholas Singleton TD clip from the Rose Bowl. We’ll wait…
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Welcome back. Notice how Penn State hesitated for a good 4-5 seconds after it lined up in the T? And notice how QB Sean Clifford has his head cranked toward the sideline for those 4-5 seconds? Well, there’s a good reason for the delay – offensive staffers in the press box are hastily determining the defense’s weakness, then (presumably) relaying that info down to the field where those three dudes in florescent polos and ballcaps who spastically signal plays in communicate with Clifford which direction to run the play.
Count along with us:
6 red hats to the boundary. 5 red hats to the field. Run right.
Because Utah’s defensive tackles 95-Aliki Vimahi and 77-Simote Pepa are both lined up in a 1-Techinque (i.e. directly across from either of the center’s shoulders) the Utes can’t match Penn State’s symmetry. 6 white hats blocking 5 red hats = 6 points.
But, for this Blast play to work, communication is key…and as we saw last year when Penn State T’d things up in the face of Ohio State’s raucous student section at the Horseshoe, that’s not always easy.
Check out how long it takes to get everyone on the same page here. Those on the LOS had to make eye contact with Clifford in order to get the call because it’s so damn hard to hear. Beyond that, rewind the clip and examine the backfield — 86-Brenton Strange had to tell 24-Keyvone Lee which direction they’re running twice, it looks like.
Ohio State does line up a defender (a stand-up linebacker, actually) directly across from center Mike Miranda, making it POSSIBLE to line up symmetrically…but they don’t. 4 silver hats to the boundary. 6 to the field. Run left.
Base Plays
Let’s unpack Blast, shall we?
So we know Strange is technically a tight end, but in the T he lines up as (and does the job of) a fullback. Therefore, we’re calling this 32 personnel (3 RBs, 2TEs). Considering Penn State’s freshmen RBs comprise one of the best 1-2 punches in college football, and the fact that the Nittany Lions rostered 3 better-than-average tight ends in 2021 and 2022, the T Formation affords Yurcich the luxury of getting his best players on the field all at once.
Penn State ran Blast (off tackle) 17 times in 2022.
The fate of this play lives and dies on how well Penn State C 70-Juice Scruggs can execute a high-degree of difficulty zone block. Specifically, Scruggs has to orchestrate a clean hands-under-crotch snap – something Penn State doesn’t do a lot – and swiftly cross the face of the playside 1-tech (77-Pepa), getting his helmet on the playside (outside) shoulder of the defender, thus preventing “bubbling” in the backfield, which would cause Singleton to widen his route and provide time for some of the 6 backside defenders (the guys Penn State counted and chose to run away from) to enter the fray.
At THIS MOMENT (snap shot below), when Scruggs’ lid lands on Pepa’s left shoulder pad, Penn State has won the rep…
…as long as everyone else does their job playside.
44-Tyler Warren performs an A+ kickout block on the end man of the line of scrimmage, Utah LB/DE 91-Gabe Reid. Penn State RG 77-Sam Wormley and RT-72 Bryce Effner work a combo block against the 3-tech with Effner eventually climbing to backside cornerback 4-JaTravis Broughton. Whether Effner can run interference on Broughton is more of a bonus than a necessity – this close to the goal line, it’s gonna take a Herculean effort from the 191-pound Broughton to take down Singleton shy of the paint.
From there, your two lead blockers 13-Kaytron Allen and 86-Strange are responsible for laying hands on the two remaining Utah defenders, LB 3-Mohamoud Diabate and S 11-R.J. Hubert. Here’s the end zone angle:
Because Yurcich’s T made a couple cameos in 2021, and because 75 percent of those T formation plays were Blast, and because defensive coordinators and assistants and GAs have no lives and grind digital film all offseason, several 2022 PSU opponents began to widen their fronts in order to make blocking assignments for Blast more difficult.
Anticipating this shift, Yurcich ‘checkmated’ those enemy DC’s ‘checks’ by adding another base play out of T this year – the most knuckle-dragging call in the sport. More commonly known as ‘The Bush Push,’ we called this primitive RB-aided QB sneak ‘Doggy Door’ in our 2022 writeups since the dude squeezing through a tight space is named Clifford…get it?
I mean, not a ton to explain here. Nothing cute going on. Team with the most push wins the rep as 86-Strange transforms into a human cowcatcher and mushes his poor quarterback through this sweaty mess for six. Not surprisingly, this play was most successful against teams with physically-inferior defensive fronts (Purdue, Ohio, Rutgers).
Shifts/Wrinkles
By the midway point of the 2022 campaign, Yurcich had ‘shown his hand’ when it came to the T Formation. Penn State’s either running Blast or Doggy Door, opposing Defensive Coordinators deduced. Therefore – because T requires offensive substitutions, thus affording the defense a chance to substitute too – teams starting tagging-out DBs in favor of additional DLs and LBs, matching Penn State’s beefy T formation with their own monster slabs of humanity.
And when defensive coordinators did this, little did they know that they were stepping right in Yurcich’s trap.
Because Penn State’s 3 tight ends are all athletes and all threats in the passing game, Yurcich began shifting out of the T pre-snap into a variety of formations that A) challenged the defense’s ability to count and communicate on the fly and B) placed Penn State’s playmakers in advantageous matchups.
By far the most diabolical (and most used) Yurcich shift debuted late in the 2nd Quarter of the Penn State-Ohio State tilt: Motioning 5 guys out of the T and into Quads Bunch toward one side with a lone receiver to the other. Sometimes the Quads Bunch was toward the field, sometimes the Quads Bunch was toward the boundary.
As you’ll see in the clip below, the sudden fire-drill transition from an old school, fingers-in-the-dirt, smashmouth T into a modern, spread-the-field alignment was jarring for the defense. Ohio State is completely lost here.
Once the shift takes place, and the defense reacts to the shift, the QB has 3 pre-snap reads/options.
- QB Inside Zone
- Slant to the lone receiver
- ‘Now’ Screen to the Quads Bunch
As long as you have 3 tight ends you can trust as blockers and ball-catchers, the offense will ALWAYS be right and the defense will ALWAYS be wrong.
Exhibit 1:
Man, Jim Knowles’ crew is kinda all over the place here, huh? The Buckeyes have 5 players floating around the Quads Bunch to the boundary, so that’s off the table for Clifford. At the bottom of the screen, Clifford has a layup free access throw to 44-Warren if he wants it. Instead, Clifford chooses the safest read – keep the ball himself and run against a 4-man box. It’s a simple numbers game: 5 blockers vs. 4 defenders = free money. Unfortunately for Penn State, the disoriented Buckeyes snuck in a timeout nanoseconds before the snap.
Exhibit 2, same game:
Having seen this shift roughly a quarter-and-a-half ago, Ohio State adjusts and manages to match-up pretty well. Four defenders account for the Quads Bunch (lined up to the field this time), so the ‘Now’ screen option is off the table for Clifford. The Buckeyes also keep 6 defenders in the box, meaning the QB keeper that was set to gash OSU in the 2nd quarter is also a non-starter here. That leaves 44-Warren matched up against OSU LB 22-Steele Chambers, a 64.5 grade pass defender according to PFF who’s out of his element and stuck on an island. Easy choice. Throw to Warren.
Exhibit 3:
The director in the TV truck misses the beginning of the shift but just trust us…this is the same play. Noticeably confused, Michigan State fails to match numbers at the Bunch – 3 defenders vs. 4 Nittany Lions. Again, it’s all a numbers game. 4 vs. 3 = advantage Penn State. Simple read. Throw the Now screen to Singleton.
One area or space on the field, if you will, that Yurcich’s traditional T does not threaten well is the edge, as the natural angles and flanks of the formation are not ideal for sealing defenders. Knowing this, Yurcich devised a shift out of T into an unbalanced formation that challenged defenses laterally.
Those of you with keen eyes spotted that Penn State’s personnel is slightly different in this T. Instead of placing two traditional RBs (Singleton and Allen) in the backfield, Yurcich swaps one out for another tight end. That substitution leaves a hole on the LOS. Yurcich fills that vacancy with an extra tackle, 72-Effner. Penn State shifts 86-Strange and 44-Warren into an inverted wing, thus creating two extra gaps. Indiana adjusts by moving over one gap…leaving one gap unaccounted for. Warren and Effner have easy down blocks to seal the edge while the traditional left tackle, 66-Drew Shelton, and Strange arc/lead block for a walk-in TD.
Summary: Inexplicably, Yurcich rummaged through dusty playbooks and blew the cobwebs off a concept that predates the invention of the automobile by four years and somehow made it innovative once more.
This T formation package was so effective because it provided answers for anything a defense would do to stop it. Don’t want to take your DBs off the field? Cool, good luck having them take on a lead blocker and fit a gap. Plan to sub in your heavy personnel? That’s fine. Let’s see how well they know all coverage checks and how comfortable those elephants are playing in space.
Additionally, Yurcich’s commitment to the T forced defensive coordinators to dedicate a portion of their game-week preparation specifically on how to handle this package. Having one more thing to worry about left opponents less time to tackle the other bread-and-butter staples of the Penn State offense.
