Penn State open practice highlights
Penn State football held an extended open practice to the media on Saturday, and Blue White Illustrated was there to see the action. Thomas Frank Carr takes you through players and position groups that stood out during practice, including Olu Fashanu and the Penn State offensive line.
Penn State open practice highlights
Practice started with positional drills, and T-Frank focused on the defensive side of the ball and young players who got attention from the Penn State staff that afternoon. Freshman defensive tackle Kaleb Artis got individual coaching from defensive line coach John Scott Jr, while first-year linebacker Abdul Carter got the same from defensive coordinator Manny Diaz and head coach James Franklin.
Then, after getting some live reps in goal line action and checking out five-star quarterback Drew Allar, T-Frank focuses on the offensive and defensive lines, who took part in one-on-one pass protection and rush drills. Fashanu led the starting offensive line in a strong performance against the starting defensive line. Additionally, fellow highly-rated freshmen Dani Dennis-Sutton and offensive tackle Drew Shelton also had a great individual battle during the drill.
Why Penn State can be better on offense in 2022: Offensive systems analysis
We’ve heard from Penn State football head coach James Franklin, offensive coordinator Mike Yurich, and quarterback Sean Clifford that year two in an offensive system provides advantages you can’t get in the first year. Comfort, communication, and other buzzwords have been where the conversation typically goes in these scenarios. But on Wednesday, Clifford gave us a deeper insight into how that process of learning and installing an offense works.
Hopefully, this will crystalize not only the next steps for the Penn State offense in 2022 but can retroactively shed light on the issues from the first year under Yurcich.
Step 1: How to install an offense
“Every offensive system, when you install something, you have your base plays, and then everything surrounds themselves off the base plays. So you make your trick plays off your base plays, your gadgets off your base plays, your double-moves off your base plays. So everything looks like the base and what you’re very comfortable with, and then you expand from there,” Clifford said yesterday, during Penn State’s third week of training camp.
At the heart of every offensive playbook is this core of “base plays .” These are the schemes your team, coordinator, and coach are all most comfortable running and believe in the most. They’re the plays run on first and ten in a neutral situation or a critical situation late in the game. They’re the bedrock of what you do as a football team; therefore, you need to be good at them.
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But for Penn State football last season, that bedrock had a fault line last year. Without thinking, fans can chant in unison “the run game” like a congregation repeating the benediction at the end of church. No trick, gimmick, or pivot will work for long if your base plays don’t work.
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