What should Lions’ new offense look like in 2021?
Penn State made perhaps the most stunning coordinator change of the college football off season to date on Friday morning, as head coach James Franklin announced that the Lions are moving on from Kirk Ciarrocca after just one season and replacing him with Mike Y ur ci ch.
“We are excited to have Mike join our staff,” Franklin said in a news release. “He is an impressive offensive mind and talented play caller whohas set records everywhere he has been as an offensive coordinator.
“I look forward to seeing what he can do with all of the offensive weapons we have here at Penn State. I have followed Mike’s career for a long time, dating back to his time in the PSAC at Shippensburg and Edinboro. We look forward to bringing Mike and his family back to Pennsylvania.”
Here are some early things to know about what the Lions are getting and how the offense will look different in 2021.
How did Yurcich end up at Penn State?
Yurcich’s story is pretty well-known at this point.
The now 45-year-old played at California University of Pa., and then bounced around a few coaching jobs after graduating in 1999. He hit his first stride with a headset at Shippensburg, where he was the offensive coordi
nator for two seasons. The Raiders set a number of program records during year one and led all Division-II offenses in many categories as quarterback Zach Zulli won the Harlon Hill Trophy in 2012.
Yurcich would then be plucked out of Pennsylvania by Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy, and the two thrived there from 2013-2018. It’s hard to imagine that Franklin did not follow Yurcich’s career arc dating back to his time in the PSAC, considering his own roots there, and what he’s seen over the last eight years is impressive.
The numbers in the Big 12 were gaudy, to say the least. Let’s just use this passage from Yurcich’s new PSU bio as an example:
“In his career as an FBS offensive coordinator, Yurcich’s offenses have averaged 6.49 yards per play, which ranks first among OC’s since 2013 and 14.03 yards per completion, which is first among Power Five OC’s in that timeframe. Since 2013, Yurcich’s offenses have scored 50 or more points 26 times and 40 or more points 51 times (50 percent of games coached), both of which are tops among FBS offensive coordinators since 2013. His teams average 61.5 touchdowns per year.” Not bad, right?
If the PSAC connection wasn’t enough to catch Franklin’s eye (and again, it was), Yurcich went on to develop Justin Fields at Ohio State in 2019, and then called plays again for a year at Texas before leaving that post for State College.
One cannot help but wonder if Franklin targeted Yurcich a year ago, but couldn’t beat Texas’ offer. The Longhorns fired Tom Herman this year, though, and Yurcich was likely going to need a new job because of it. Penn State, on the latest chance to snare him, looks to have had the best offer available.
On the surface, this appears to be more about how badly Franklin wanted Yurcich than it is an indictment of Ciarrocca’s one pandemic-impacted year with the Lions.
The goal is to go
Get ready to hear the word tempo a lot, because Joe Moorhead and Bill O’Brien aren’t back in town, but a love for running plays quickly certainly is.
“Tempo is there to totally disrupt the lines of communications of defense,” Yurcich said last year, according to SB Nation. “Defensive coordinators, they want to see what you’re in, they want to see you line up, they want to signal over to their safety, they want to signal to the Mike ‘backer, they want to see where the tailback is lined up, what’s the guard and center split on the back side, and they want to call all of that out and then call their defense.
“So what you want to try to do is eliminate that communication. The faster you go, the more you eliminate that.”
This isn’t new to the college game, of course, and Penn State has tried to be fast in the past, but Yurcich has a track record of doing so efficiently, which hasn’t always been a hallmark of the Lions’ offense in the Franklin era. It’s worth noting that his offenses have often averaged over five yards a play.
Some fans might remember O’Brien’s “NASCAR” package, and Yurcich has a version of it, too. Make no mistake that he will slow the game downat times — speed is not the only feature of his offense — but scoring points in bunches is the name of the game anymore, and again, the new play caller has a history of directing teams that could do just that.
It’s the spread, but it’s not just passing
Manywill look at Yurcich’s time at Oklahoma State and assume his Big 12 background will mean pass, pass, pass over and over and over again.
This version of what has often been referred to as the smashmouth spread is more nuanced than that.
While noting that game flow, having a lead versus losing, and personnel all factor into a team’s seasonal pass/run averages, check out these numbers from Yurcich’s past courtesy of Sports Reference:
Oklahoma State plays per game average splits under Yurcich (pass | run)
2013: 37.2 | 38.7
2014: 30.8 | 38.9
2015: 39.8 | 35.4
2016: 35.8 | 37.8
2017: 38.7 | 38.5
2018: 37.8 | 39.9
Texas plays per game average splits under Yurcich (pass | run) 2020: 34.5 | 37