Sunday Column: Can Penn State Love the One It’s With AND Swipe Right on a Transfer Portal QB?

It’s Valentine’s Day, and Penn State football fans are in search of a new love – under center.

The recent departures of Will Levis and Micah Bowens leave the Nittany Lions with three scholarship quarterbacks – senior Sean Clifford, redshirt sophomore Ta’Quan Roberson and freshman Christian Veilleux. However bullish you are on Clifford’s chances of returning to his 2019 form or surpassing it in Mike Yurcich’s system, there is room there for an experienced transfer to either back up Clifford as Roberson and Veilleux develop or to claim the starting job outright.

As the staff mulls its options in the portal, including Tyler Shough, who announced his decision to transfer from Oregon on Friday, they would be wise to value certain traits over others – both those any transfer already possesses and those the coaches think they can develop.

Franklin’s first Penn State quarterback, Christian Hackenberg, was born on Valentine’s Day in 1995. A five-star recruit, he had everything a coach could want in a quarterback at first glance – NFL size, elite arm talent, brains and a competitive streak.

What he didn’t have enough of, however, were three A’s – accuracy, anticipation and adaptability.

Accuracy means being able to put the ball where it needs to be – on a receiver’s numbers, not his knees – with the right amount of velocity and touch. Anticipation is knowing not just where the ball needs to go but when; the ability to throw the football 50 yards on a rope doesn’t mean much if a defensive lineman is sitting on your chest before the receiver can run 30 yards. Adaptability is knowing what to do if your first read is covered, when to break the pocket and when to stand in, how to handle a two-minute drill or a defense that’s spitting out multiple pre-snap looks. Hackenberg’s successor, Trace McSorley, didn’t have the 5-star’s measurables, and his career completion percentage wasn’t all that much better (59% to 56%), but he anticipated and adapted with far more success.

Good coaching can help with all three of these A’s, putting receivers in better spots for the quarterback to connect with them and limiting the amount of adapting he has to do from play to play, but there is only so much coaches can take off a quarterback’s plate. The demands of the position require quarterbacks to make multiple decisions on each play in tenths of a second. It is as much instinct as it is acquired knowledge, and far more difficult than fans – or writers – make it out to be. That’s why it’s hard to know exactly what you have in a quarterback until you put him in a game, regardless of background or scheme. 

Shough, like Hackenberg and Clifford, was a top-10 high school quarterback prospect who throws an impressive deep ball and, like both, has been up-and-down when it comes to the three A’s mentioned above. He had a solid 64% completion rate and was 12th in the nation in yards per attempt (9.34) in his first season as a starter this past fall but also threw six interceptions in seven games and saw his efficiency fall off toward the end of the season, when he split reps with transfer Anthony Brown. Shough also showed the sort of discomfort in the pocket that too often plagued Clifford in 2020.

Still, Shough, with three years of eligibility remaining, will be an intriguing prospect for many teams, and Penn State’s recent history with Ducks offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead ought to make the Nittany Lions one of them.

Yurcich has worked magic with new starters before, but he wasn’t exactly taking on reclamation projects at his last two stops. At Texas, he inherited Sam Ehlinger, whose numbers this year actually dropped from the season before but still put him among the nation’s Top 25 in passing efficiency. At Ohio State in 2019, he helped Georgia transfer Justin Fields, now a likely top 5 NFL Draft choice, post an efficiency rating of 181.4, fourth-best in the nation. As offensive coordinator, he will be asked to craft a scheme that takes advantage of the talent he has returning. As quarterbacks coach, he will be asked to get at least one QB mechanically and mentally ready to run the show, to be an extension of his own mind on the field.

Whoever emerges at quarterback for Penn State this fall, whether he is currently on the roster or not, will have to learn that new system, like the rest of his offensive teammates. But it will be his ability to make the right reads, make accurate and timely throws, and adapt to trouble, whether that’s a free rusher or a late two-possession deficit, that will determine not only his success but just how far his team can go.