Inside 'probably the most important meeting of the year' that kept the Penn State offense moving forward

Atlanta — Penn State players and coaches arrived at a different Lasch Building on the Sunday after the Michigan game. Mike Yurcich was no longer the team’s offensive coordinator. The quarterbacks found out first, then the rest of the roster did. There was no time to waste. Rutgers, after all, was on deck, one of two final regular season games to go. Two wins would equal a New Year’s Six bowl trip. A loss would knock the Lions out of that picture.

It was time to go to work.

There is an outside perception that when a coach moves on, be it involuntarily or by choice, the world stops spinning. In reality, though, it can’t. Game plans must still be made. Meetings have to be held. Ways to improve need to be found. So, while the rest of the world was busy debating the merits of Yurcich’s firing, his tenure, and what would happen next, those inside the Penn State football family were moving the ball forward. Sundays are cleanup days. So, the Lions corrected their Michigan mistakes. Then, they gathered as usual, with offense and defense meetings.

“It was kind of a standard meeting that we have the day after a game,” tight end Theo Johnson said. “Just, we didn’t have our coordinator there.”

As you’re about to read though, this meeting was hardly standard. And, Johnson was a big reason why.

‘Probably the most important meeting of the year’

With Yurcich gone, running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider and tight ends coach Ty Howle became the interim co-offensive coordinators. It’s unclear who actually calls the plays. That’s immaterial, though, to what happened on that Sunday in the Lasch Building. The two knew their players were hurting. They also knew the Scarlet Knights were six days away. Both were facts. And there was only one way to deal with them.

“Obviously, you come in on Sunday after a tough game, [you’re] trying to pick those guys back up and make sure their heads are held high, because at the end of the day, the next team you play don’t care about what happened last week,” Howle said during a Peach Bowl media session here on Wednesday. “And so you have to learn and grow from it. And then you got to move on and prepare for your next opponent.

“Ultimately, kind of the thing that we talked about it, it’s about us, and what we’re going to do this week. So I do think it was a good message and those things. But I think we left the room, ‘hey guys, we’re unified, ready to go win the rest of our games. We’re going to have fun, we’re going to put you guys in a position to be successful.’ So, when you walk out and meeting, we were going to prepare for Rutgers.”

‘Probably the most important meeting of the year’

Quarterback Drew Allar took Yurcich moving on to heart. He had recruited him to Penn State and, along with Lions head coach James Franklin, was one of the big reasons he picked the school. The former five-star admitted that he struggled some with the change in the days after it but knew Franklin would only do what was best for the progam. But, in the moment of that first Sunday meeting after his firing, there was no time to reflect on any of that.

“That was probably the most important meeting of the year for the offense, just because that’s when we could’ve either taken a step back as offense, or we could rebound and come back together as offense,” Allar said.

Johnson, a captain and vocal leader on the team, is big reason why that happened. The Penn State standout has a clear message to his teammates, one that obviously resonated.

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“It’s tough, obviously, losing a game like that and so much change happening so quick,” Johnson said. “The big thing is just kind of staying together and not losing the team. Because it’s very easy to let things snowball and spiral and just kind of lose that closeness that helps us play at a high level. So I think that meeting was kind of just rallying the troops and making sure that guys weren’t getting negative or getting in a bad place.

“And I think that was a big message kind of across the board that, at the end of the day, if you love football, you’re going to go out and play at your best regardless of what the last couple of games have looked like.”

In the two games that followed, the Penn State offense had more variety. It beat up the Scarlet Knights, 27-6, before blowing out Michigan State 42-0.

Penn State was able to move forward, leading it to the Peach Bowl

Seider and Howle will call their final game together in the Peach Bowl. Then, both will work under new play caller Andy Kotelnicki in 2024. The two have a genuine appreciation for each other that allows them to click. They live near each other. Before every game, they jog around the field, allowing the quietness of the stadium to get them ready for kickoff. Each has an easy-going, relatable nature. And they are goal-oriented.

All of it combined to help the offense adapt to change and kept the Penn State players on the right path. The members of the roster took their message and ran with it. This is how the Lions, despite a massive coaching change late in the year, kept moving forward right into Saturday’s Peach Bowl on offense.

“I think that’s something that we really thought about when this transition happened, what we wanted it to look like,” Howle said. “The first thing we thought about was players, not plays. Who are the guys that are going to help us win? And being able to take advantage of things that they do well and put them in the positions to do those things.”

Added Seider:

“Our motto since we took over is simplicity equals speed. What that means is we don’t want these guys thinking. We want them to go play. At the end of the day, you win games by the kids you’ve got on the field and not what you think as a play caller.”