What A Rush

From Last Year To This Year, Penn State Has Made Substantial Gains in the Run Game. But Why? What’s Changed? What’s Different?

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We’ve all heard/read the dreadful numbers, but for the sake of posterity, here they are again: Last year, the Penn State Nittany Lions managed only 107.8 rushing yards/game. That ranked 13th in the 14-team B1G.

This year, the run plays on Mike Yurcich’s laminated card have yielded much better results on the ground. Roughly midway through the season, Penn State sits solidly in the middle of the conference pack in most rushing metrics. “We Are” clipping along with 192.6 rushing yards/game (5th) and — excluding kneel-downs — 5.2 Y/C (t-4th). For reference, even in the Wondrous Saquon Days Penn State never got higher than 6th in the B1G in rushing yards.

So, we pondered, to what do we owe this dramatic turn-around on the ground in 2022?

Freshman 15

True freshmen Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen are – with no qualifying statements – a better tandem than preseason portal departees Noah Cain and Caziah Holmes.

Through Week 4, Singleton led the B1G and – if you take out the weirdo military academies that ONLY run – College Football (capital C, capital F) in yards/carry (9.0). Allen has the vision of a much wiser man; his 6.0 Y/C was 9th in the B1G. Both were top-10 runners and both were plucking touchdowns in bunches…banana style. By the way, what’s 9.0 + 6.0?

Obviously (who let Mike Tomlin in here?) they took a step back against Northwestern – from first and ninth to second and 13th. A lot of those issues can be attributed to the rain but it happens to rain a lot in Michigan; hell, it rains a lot here.

Coach can do that tight-lip thing all he wants but when all three of the RBs you throw out there put the ball on the ground, it’s probably an institutional thing. The broadcast mentioned the Wildcats had been practicing in wet-weather conditions (to paraphrase) and frankly they didn’t have those same issues. I don’t know if the answer is hosing your players down as they run through practice drills but something needs to be done.

“I love it when a plan comes together”

When I wrote about Keyvone Lee this summer I noted he ran behind zone-blocking schemes exactly twice as often as he ran behind gap-blocking in 2021 (72 vs. 36 attempts). The same could be said of Saquon in 2016 (182 zone/83 gap). Miles Sanders had almost three times as many zone compared to gap rushes (157 zone/55 gap) in 2018. In 2019, Journey Brown had over four times as many (104 zone/24 gap).

Through Week 5 of 2022 it’s 81 zone vs. 83 gap attempts. I’ll get to why that’s significant in a moment; first, my over-simplified, dumb guy understanding of zone vs. man (gap) blocking.

There are two keys to zone blocking:

1) The ball-carrier reads key defenders (inside zone: 1st defender play-side of the center; outside zone: 2nd defender play-side of the center) to determine his path. A RB with great field vision will make the defense always wrong: “If he goes inside, I’ll go outside. If he goes outside…”

2) Double teams along the line limit penetration. When (if) the initial blocks are controlled, one of the blockers will (attempt to) release to the second level.

The design is to not lose yards; for that reason the zone running game – although it can be incredibly consistent – is considered low risk/low reward. Take a look at two examples of Nick Singleton running the outside zone:

You can recognize zone blocking if the entire offensive line is on one track. Notice before the second clip they all take their first step in unison: with their left feet, driving off their right legs.

Man (or gap) blocking schemes are what they sound like: blockers are assigned a defender (or gap) to deal with pre-snap. The linemen don’t have to make on-the-fly decisions, nor does the runner. His lane is scripted with the play call, everyone knows their job and – if everyone does their job – you could drive a bus through the hole they create.

That’s the “gap” part; the “scheme” is pulling blockers behind the line (usually from the weak-side) to seal the edge and/or lead the charge. The idea is to give the offense more men at the point of attack than the defense. The explosive potential there is obvious, although crashers and penetrators can wreak havoc and cause significant losses.

At 6’6”/260 pounds, there are less than a handful of tight ends in the B1G larger than Theo Johnson. He’s the H-back (just a TE split back from the line) in these clips:

One more wrinkle I want to address that’s really worked in the Nittany Lions favor this year is the split zone game. Standard zone blocking rules apply up front but instead of leaving the backside edge unblocked a tight end (or H-back) will drag back across the face of the formation to seal backside pursuit. Brenton Strange is the H-back in both these clips:

The prevalence of gap blocking this season is probably less a concerted game plan and more a function of a lower-win rate with zone blocking. It seems like the thing they go to when things aren’t working; the adjustment skews the numbers making it look like it was working all along. I’d be curious to hear Coach’s take on that.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the ‘C’

 In his post-Auburn press availability Coach Franklin was asked about Clifford being under center more compared to years past. Coach poured cold water on the “downhill running” narrative but he did grant play action is more effective under-center than from the shotgun.

When your QB is under center he needs to turn his back to the defense to hand the ball off — or to run a play-fake. Ben Roethlisberger refused to do it towards the end of his career; if defenders were looking at the back of his helmet, they knew he was handing it off.

Sean Clifford clearly doesn’t share those apprehensions but defenses are still looking for every advantage. Indicating hand-off pulls the LB’s in (or momentarily flattens their feet) loosening the middle of the field for those intermediate slant/dig routes.

Drop your QB back into the shotgun and everything is always in front of him. He’s just watching the defense; if the defense is playing zone, they’re watching him watch them. That body language implies pass, which makes defenses slower to key on the run. The additive effect being under center has on the play action game can be applied to the draw run out of the shotgun.

Statistical analyses have bore out time and again that a fearsome ground game is not necessary for an effective play action. Having a guy like Singleton who can house it at any time sure doesn’t hurt, though.