Penn State-Michigan takeaways: OC Mike Yurcich needs to take a look in the mirror

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — As Curtis Jacobs dashed down the Penn State sideline, returning a tip-drill interception for a 47-yard score, offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich threw his hands up in celebration. It might have been the happiest he was all day.

Penn State’s defense getting gashed was the story of Saturday’s 41-17 loss. It’s not Yurcich’s fault Michigan ran for 418 yards and four touchdowns. But Penn State’s offense — and, by close association, its play-caller — didn’t do enough to keep up.

The Nittany Lions were outgained 563 to 268. Take Sean Clifford’s 62-yard run and his 48-yard throw to Harrison Wallace III out of the equation, and the Nittany Lions averaged a meager 3.2 yards per play.

Now, after Saturday’s blowout and last year’s Illinois debacle, Yurcich’s offenses have produced only two touchdowns in eight quarters and nine overtime periods after bye weeks.

Limited running game

Penn State ran the rock twice on its opening drive. Nick Singleton was stopped for a gain of 1 yard on first down and brought down for a loss on third-and-1. The freshman phenom just couldn’t get to the edge.

From that point until the end of the third quarter, Singleton and Kaytron Allen ran a combined seven times on 34 plays. That’s not the sign of a functioning offense. This is the same duo that combined for 704 yards and eight touchdowns over the last four games. Singleton can take it the distance on any play, and Allen loves tough sledding. This game felt like it was right up his alley.

And yet, when the defense could have used a breather — when the offense needed balance to prevent Michigan from teeing off on Clifford — the ground game was nowhere to be found. The offensive line got bodied, so that doesn’t help. Michigan is one of the best defenses against the run. But Singleton and Allen finishing with only 12 carries combined isn’t a formula for winning, especially on the road.

Third-down offense requires work

The lack of a committed running game fed into this, but the Nittany Lions were bad on third down. Overall, they converted 4 of 12 third-down tries. They were 1 of 4 on third downs with more than 9 yards to go. Even worse, they moved the chains on only 2 of 6 third downs needing 1 to 4 yards.

Two of those third-and-short misses resulted in three-and-outs to open the game.

“We know as an offense that we can’t just go out there and have three-and-outs like that,” tight end Brenton Strange said. “That’s unacceptable. And that’s not the standard that we should play with.”

Going into Saturday’s game, Penn State ranked 104th out of 131 FBS teams in third-down conversion rate, moving the chains only 33.9% of the time. At Michigan, that rate was 33.3%.

Ban the fade

There’s proof the goal-line fade is inefficient. As noted in an ESPN story from a couple of years back, only 13.5% of fade routes were caught for touchdowns compared to 57% of flat routes, 42% of slants and 42.5% of out routes during the 2019 NFL season. Over the course of the 2017 and 2018 seasons, only 30% of fades led to touchdowns, according to Sports Info Solutions.

The ineffectiveness and sheer lack of imagination with the goal-line fade has cultivated an army of football fans dedicated to “banning” it. It might be called, but no one wants to watch it. Which made Penn State’s red-zone trips brutal to witness.

Yurcich dialed up goal-line fades on Penn State’s only red-zone possessions. It didn’t cost the Nittany Lions in the second quarter: an incomplete attempt to 5-foot-10 wideout Parker Washington was followed up by an Allen touchdown run. But Penn State had to settle for a field goal to start the third quarter because a fade to Mitchell Tinsley on third-and-4 fell harmlessly to the turf.

Tinsley said after the game that Penn State practices fade routes “all the time.” Maybe after Saturday the Nittany Lions will stray away from it.

Clifford wasn’t the (only) problem

A narrative around this game was the opportunity Clifford had in front of him. He’s a sixth-year senior, and he acknowledged earlier in the week that you only get so many of these high-profile matchups in your career. You have to take advantage of them.

He didn’t do that. Clifford completed 7 of 19 passes for 120 yards before leaving in the fourth quarter with an injury. He could have performed better. And if he was made available to the media after the game, surely he would have acknowledged that.

But nothing around him was working. His pass protection failed him. He didn’t have a running game. His coordinator was dialing up fades at the goal line. It was a total mess, and if Drew Allar was in, it probably would’ve been the same.

We know what Clifford is, and perhaps that’s the root of the frustration around the sixth-year senior. He certainly deserves some of the blame. But not all of it.