Penn State’s newly-elevated play-calling Orthrus wasted no time putting the Scarlet Knights on notice that they’d have to respect Beau Pribula as a runner.
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The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Despite our unrealistic hopes and dreams, Coach Seider and Coach Howle’s first career game as co-playcallers, the offense was kept pretty vanilla. Bummer.
Although a lot of us hoped they would reinvent the wheel in their 6 days as interim lever-pullers of the Nittany Lion offense, the risk of coloring too outside the lines against an inferior opponent and jeopardizing Penn State’s shot at a NY6 by playing too fast and loose far outweighed the reward of showing potential employers how cute and clever they can be when picking plays off a laminated sheet.
As a young child, I remember watching Penn State dismantle Rutgers quite often and quite thoroughly in Beaver Stadium, and in between series I’d study the Scarlet Knights’ players and coaches in the game program and wonder just what the hell a Rutger was.
Eventually, I learned that Rutgers University, formerly Queen’s College, was re-named in 1825 for Henry Rutgers, a Revolutionary War colonel and philanthropist whose timely donation saved the school from closing for a third time in its young history. I also learned that Rutgers’ remains were lost for several years, which I suppose is either a mundane bit of trivia or an apt metaphor for most of the team’s offensive organization in the years since. Or maybe both.
Which brings us to Saturday’s Rutgers-Penn State contest, which pitted the Scarlet Knights’ run-heavy but aerially deficient attack, led by old friend Kirk Ciarrocca, against the Nittany Lions’, um, shall we say inconsistent attack, led by interim co-OCs Ja’Juan Seider and Ty Howle following Sunday’s unceremonious canning of (Ciarrocca replacement!) Mike Yurcich.
The reason quarterback is the most important position on the field is that the best of them provide the best chance to create plays when it looks as though no play is there, to beat a blitz or a stunt or perfect coverage with a pinpoint throw or a timely scramble. Much of the excitement that surrounds Penn State coming out of the spring is that the Nittany Lions appear to have at least one of those playmaking quarterbacks ready to roll this fall.
The rest of the excitement, if not most of it, should be based on the notion that if Drew Allar and/or Beau Pribula aren’t fully ready when the season begins, the guys around them should give them time to get there.
Saturday’s Blue-White Game was the first actual scrimmage format for the Nittany Lions since 2019 but it was also still a Blue-White Game, which means any firm conclusions other than that it was the sport of football and that the players on the field will make up the majority of the players who will take the field in the games that count should be avoided.