Sunday Column: Franklin Takes Big Swing to Bolster Offense, But Might Need to Take One More

James Franklin has been recruiting at a high level this winter – not just with players (Penn State currently has the third-ranked Class of 2022 in the country according to the 247Sports Composite) but with his swift and surprising addition of offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Mike Yurcich.

The recruitment of the latter could play a big role in helping Franklin land an even more important piece of the Nittany Lions’ 2021 puzzle.

It isn’t hard to see why Franklin pounced when Texas parted ways with Yurcich’s former boss, Tom Herman. The 45-year-old Yurcich’s career resume reads a lot like that of Franklin’s; he was a Division II quarterback at California University of Pennsylvania (Franklin played quarterback at another PSAC school, East Stroudsburg) and, like his new boss, earned a degree in psychology. Franklin had coached for nine different college or professional teams before getting his first job as a head coach in 2011; Yurcich, who has never been a head coach, is now at his eighth stop after making his third move since New Year’s Day 2019.

More importantly, Yurcich is inarguably one of the top assistants in college football and, commanding a reported salary of $1.7 million at Texas, is also paid like one. If you’ve run the numbers, as Franklin always does, Penn State stands to get a strong return on what was no doubt a weighty investment. Over the last six seasons – four at Oklahoma State, one at Ohio State and this past fall in Austin – Yurcich-led offenses averaged at least 38.4 points per game and topped 42 points per game in four of the last five. During that same six-year stretch, Penn State – with four offensive coordinators at the controls – averaged more than 38 points per game just once. 

Whether this was a reflexive move to grab a suddenly available coach who has been on Franklin’s radar for a while or an indictment of how his offense looked in just one season under Kirk Ciarrocca or, perhaps most likely, a combination of both, is somewhat moot. What matters is what Franklin does with it, and it does open the door for some intriguing possibilities.

The first is that the Nittany Lions do what they’ve often done these last few years – give Sean Clifford a new offense to learn. The quarterback from Cincinnati will enter his fifth year in 2021 and work with his fourth offensive coordinator. If anyone knows how to reset, it’s No. 14, who never seemed comfortable this past season, though many of his struggles were not scheme-specific.

Penn State could, of course, also turn to Will Levis or youngster Ta’Quan Roberson, but a new year and another new coordinator would seem to be the perfect opportunity for a new quarterback via the transfer portal, and this is where Yurcich should have an early impact in a couple of ways.

First, Yurcich’s track record as a point-scorer and his history with developing quarterbacks (Mason Rudolph, Justin Fields, Sam Ehlinger) will make Penn State an attractive destination on its own. And that’s not even taking his prowess as a recruiter into account.

Yurcich inherited Fields and Ehlinger, but he recruited a trio of four-star quarterbacks – Rudolph (a three-year starter and third-round NFL Draft selection in 2018) and Spencer Sanders (the 2019 Big 12 Freshman of the Year) at Oklahoma State and C.J. Stroud at Ohio State. That bodes well not only for Penn State’s recruiting future at the position but also the recruiting present should the staff decide to pursue quarterback options in the transfer portal.

Franklin has no shortage of experience breaking in new assistant coaches, though Ciarrocca is the first coordinator he has moved on from (Joe Moorhead and Ricky Rahne left to pursue other opportunities) since John Donovan at the end of the 2015 season. In one sense, it’s not surprising – the Nittany Lions lost their first five games of the season, after all, and the OFFENSE left a lot of points on the field and coughed up the ball far too often. One could have easily made a case for giving Ciarrocca at least one more year, but with his pedigree and eight months to go until the start of next season, he shouldn’t have much trouble finding a seat in college football’s never-ending game of musical chairs.

Yurcich will have a lot to work with this offseason – solid depth returning along the offensive line, an intriguing stable of running backs in Noah Cain, Keyvone Lee, Caziah Holmes, and Baylor transfer John Lovett, two promising young tight ends in Brenton Strange and Theo Johnson, and an outstanding pair of wide receivers in Jahan Dotson and Parker Washington. He was able to install his offense and/or adapt it to the current personnel with immediate success in both Columbus and Austin. If he can achieve that level of success with the quarterbacks Penn State is returning, he will be a worthy investment.

But if the man Franklin convinced to come to State College can find a quarterback to come with him, that installation might be even smoother.