Penn State football set to unveil its new offense Saturday at Beaver Stadium

Penn State spent most of the 2020 season trying to find itself offensively. The Nittany Lions struggled to move the ball at times and looked like a team without much direction when it had the ball.

They finished at a respectable No. 26 in Bill Connelly’s SP+, a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency, but head coach James Franklin decided to make a change and move on from then-offensive coordinator/QBs coach Kirk Ciarrocca and hire Mike Yurcich for the same position.

Yurcich’s unit at Texas, where he was the offensive coordinator, finished No. 8 in the country in SP+ and has given reason to believe the Nittany Lions will be vastly improved on offense.

They will have their first opportunity to unveil that offense on Saturday afternoon at the team’s spring practice, which will be open to a select group of people, and to show off the upside they’ll have with the ball in their hands. It will put the benefit of spring ball in learning a new scheme on display — a benefit the team didn’t have last year when spring practice was canceled.

Yurcich’s offenses have been predicated on their explosiveness and the pace they play with and that should continue to be a staple. As Yurcich has explained, the fast tempo is an important piece of what he wants to do.

“You’re trying to really handcuff (the defense) into minimizing how much information they can communicate between each play,” Yurcich said at his introductory press conference in February. “From position to position, they’ve gotta get their strength, they’ve gotta get their goal. So you’re trying to minimize that. You’re trying to exhaust them. You’re trying to wear them out and get them huffing and puffing.”

The offense will need to be on the same page to take advantage of the defense’s confusion, and this spring gave the Nittany Lions the chance to build that knowledge and understand the playbook.

Freshman wide receiver Parker Washington said the change in scheme hasn’t been overly drastic for the Nittany Lions, and just took some extra time with the playbook and his teammates.

“Really, just the terminology changes a lot,” Washington said. “That’s really it. You just have to pick up on stuff like that. It just takes more time studying and going over plays with your teammates. Once you get the terminology down, I feel like everything is all good and you’ll be all set for the practices and games.”

While the scheme should have a massive impact on the offense, the man calling the plays already has made one.

Several players — from Sean Clifford and Devyn Ford, to Jahan Dotson and Mike Miranda, with many more in between —have spoken about the energy Yurcich brings to the practice field.

The liveliness he brings has several of those players excited and has made practices fun and competitive.

“He’s a character,” Dotson said about Yurcich. “I love it, though. The first day he stepped in, I loved the energy he brought to the team and everything he was about. It’s been fun working with him and I honestly just can’t wait to go through the whole season with him and everything, and just dive in the new things I can learn. … He’s a mastermind and I just can’t wait to pick his brain apart and learn the new things that he has to offer.”

A more joyous and competitive practice will help a team that looked offbeat last season. The Nittany Lions didn’t appear to be on the same page for much of the season on offense and it ultimately led to an 0-5 start.

Some of those issues can be rectified just by practicing together more and spending time around each other, as several players, including Clifford, Keaton Ellis and Brandon Smith have pointed out.

Clifford hadn’t thrown to Washington until two weeks prior to Penn State’s season opener against Indiana last year. Despite that, Washington finished with 489 yards and six touchdowns on 36 receptions last season.

Now, the offense as a whole is benefiting from more time together and it’s already showing positive results on the field.

“It’s a lot better, the chemistry, and just being on the same page as everybody,” Ford said. “Just being able to have those conversations on the field. … Being on the field and just being able to move as one, I guess, again is pretty nice.”

Those relationships won’t make a good offense, but they’ll give the team a head start it didn’t have in 2020. The Nittany Lions have had time to grow together and learn a new offense as a group this spring, a luxury they weren’t afforded in Ciarrocca’s offense because of the pandemic.

Yurcich is unlikely to put the full offense on display Saturday — which will look more like a regular practice with some added “bells and whistles,” according to Franklin — but he will have a chance to show why he was worth making a change for after Ciarrocca had only one year on the job.

Based on what several Nittany Lions have said this spring, Saturday could be the first glimpse of a unit that has a chance to take the team to new heights in 2021.

“I’m excited for this offense,” Washington said with a smile. “Coach Yurcich does a lot of great things at practice. He brings that juice, the energy. It’ll definitely be great to see what we do this year.”