Penn State rushing game using deeds, not words, to show improvement

James Franklin has learned his lesson. The veteran coach has gone into previous Penn State football seasons talking optimistically about the progress he’s seen from the Nittany Lions’ offensive front. He’s talked of strides being made, corners being turned, only to have many of the same issues recur once the season begins. 

So this year, Franklin is being a bit more circumspect. Rather than gushing about what he’s seen in spring practice and the first few days of preseason camp, he kept his thoughts on the line’s development mostly to himself at Penn State’s football media day on Saturday afternoon, acknowledging the gap between rhetoric and reality the past few years. 

“I’m not going to sit here and pound the table about how this is the year,” he said. “That hasn’t necessarily played out the past couple of years. I’m going to take a more measured approach and let us prove that to you on the offensive line.” 

Penn State rushing woes

The Nittany Lions are coming off a 2021 season in which they finished 13th in the Big Ten and 118th in the Football Bowl Subdivision in rushing, with an average of 107.8 yards per game. No Penn State running back topped 100 yards in any game last year, and leading rusher Keyvone Lee finished with just 530 yards. 

Lee’s rushing total was a bit better than in 2020, his true freshman season in which he gained 438 yards after showing potential late in the year. But those yearly rushing totals are the lowest at Penn State since Austin Scott managed only 436 yards in 2003.

Historically, the ground game has been a bellwether for PSU. When it’s been good, the Nittany Lions have thrived. When it’s been bad, they’ve struggled. 

Since 2000, there have been nine football seasons in which the Lions didn’t field a 1,000-yard rusher. In only one of those seasons did they win more than seven games. In five of them, they finished with a losing record.

The one outlier was the 2019 season. Journey Brown finished with 890 yards, but the Nittany Lions still won 11 games, largely because their rushing attack was quite effective by the end of the year thanks to Brown’s late emergence as the kind of game-breaking threat who could turn an ordinary carry into a 40- or 50-yard gain. 

But Brown had to give up football just before the 2020 season due to a heart condition, and ever since, the Nittany Lions have struggled to generate big plays on the ground. They simply haven’t had that type of dynamic running back in their backfield.

Help on the way?

Do they have one this year? At media day, Franklin hailed the “new faces in that room who have created some good competition and depth.” He was referring, of course, to true freshmen Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen. Singleton in particular has been eliciting buzz; a 6,000-yard high school career will have that effect. 

Franklin suggested on Saturday that the backfield, which also returns Devyn Ford and Caziah Holmes in addition to Lee, could have the kind of explosiveness that’s been missing since Brown was forced to medically retire.

“I think the biggest thing is the potential for big plays in the running game,” he said. “That’s going to be important for us. Your numbers are always going to be impacted if you don’t have any of those long runs to affect not only field position but also averages.

“And then I think that plays a role in taking some of the pressure off of the passing game. That should create some more big-play potential off of play-action passes.”

Offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich described Singleton as “a very gifted runner.”

“We’re sharing a lot of reps right now,” Yurcich said. “It’s been a lot of fun to watch all of the backs. It’s a good backfield. Nick has a special talent. He’s still got to progress in protections and just the fundamentals of tailback play [but] those are all things that Coach [Ja’Juan] Seider will teach extremely well and thoroughly, and we’re going to continue to see growth from him.”

Next steps

Yurcich was also enthused about the offensive line’s development. “We’ve had two helmet-and-shoulder-pad practices, and those guys have been very physical, their attitudes have been exceptional, and their effort has been tremendous,” he said. “Those are the things that we can control. We like where we’re headed. They’re coming off the ball extremely well. Coach [Phil] Trautwein has done a helluva job getting those guys ready, so from that standpoint, where we’re at right now, we love it.”

Franklin has maintained all along that the recent problems with the Nittany Lions’ ground game can’t be laid entirely at the feet of a single unit, whether it’s the offensive line or the running backs. It’s been an imperfect storm that will require improvements from the linemen, the running backs, and the play callers. 

“It’s scheme, it’s fundamentals, it’s coaching, it’s recruiting, it’s all of it,” he said.

Franklin prefers to let the team’s performance speak for itself, but he added that the Nittany Lions worked relentlessly on their ground game throughout the offseason and are hopeful that the attention will produce results. 

“It’s been emphasized,” he said. “I’ve felt like that in the past as well, but it’s been emphasized enough that we have a chance to take a step in the right direction this year.”