STATE COLLEGE — The difference is three plays, in Andy Kotelnicki’s mind.

Had Penn State executed one more successful play in any of its three losses in 2024, it could have marked the difference in a national championship appearance, a Big Ten Championship or an undefeated regular season.

To reach college football’s mountain top, second-year offensive coordinator Kotelnicki recognizes how small the margins can be. They shrink exponentially as programs march from a top-50 school to top 25 to the short list of national championship contenders.

Coach James Franklin has built Penn State as a bona fide national power. His weekly approach has the Lions handling games they should with consistency. But his teams have yet to crack the code on becoming the best of the best. In recent years, that’s often come because of shortcomings on offense.

The hope is that Kotelnicki’s second season shaves those margins even thinner.

The continuity of Kotelnicki’s return means Penn State has had ample opportunity to perfect what made it a top-30 offense by scoring and yardage last season, as well as the team with the most 10-plus-yard gains from scrimmage.

“Unfortunately, in this game, you don’t know when that (margin) is going to show up, but it’s going to,” Kotelnicki told PennLive this summer, “and you need to be on the right side of it.”

The Nittany Lions offensive coordinator views his play calls like binary code — ones and zeroes that correlate to success or failure with no in between.

Whether it was a costly Drew Allar interception in the Orange Bowl against Notre Dame or a goal-line failure in the fourth quarter against Ohio State, Penn State and Kotelnicki experienced those slim margins the hard way.

Now Kotelnicki knows his personnel better in Year 2. He knows players’ capabilities and limitations. He understands who’s a visual learner, who needs to go run the play to understand it. The same goes for his position coaches, figuring out how they can better teach a scheme built around players’ strengths.

“The difference is the fact that we get that many more reps of it, hearing a play call, lining up in a formation,” Kotelnicki said. “We have that much more of it banked now, which allows you to maybe have a little wrinkle or emphasize something more or less.”

Allar, for example, has earned the nickname “Coach Allar.” The senior quarterback can walk into the meeting room and present his own ideas about designs and game plans, and Kotelnicki will listen. Kotelnicki, Allar and QBs coach Danny O’Brien can sit down after a heartbreaking Notre Dame loss to air out what each felt they did wrong along the way. No one feels they have to defend an in-game decision or a play call.

Kotelnicki likened that experience with his players to something he dreaded in college: writing reflection papers.

What was once a horrible chore, though, is now something the Minnesota native uses as fuel to improve.

“If you can honestly and vulnerably reflect on what you need to improve on as a person, you’re better than 97% of people out there,” he said. “And I feel like our football guys do that a lot. My favorite thing is they all hold each other accountable — and us as coaches, too.”

Kotelnicki spent more than a decade starting his coaching career under now-Kansas head coach Lance Leipold. While their approach shifted and evolved over the years, he was in a comfortable situation that took a big-time offer like Franklin’s to get him to leave.

Once again, Kotelnicki had an opportunity to leave Penn State after one season to become a head coach elsewhere. That’s a goal of his, but the stability and potential at Penn State this season were major factors that brought him back.

Kotelnicki sees similarities between Leipold and Franklin in the fact they’re both “process-oriented individuals.” Things don’t change in practice or film study, no matter if Penn State wins by 50 or loses by one. Kotelnicki now knows exactly what that process looks like. Last year, he had no idea how a Sunday morning meeting would go following an opening win at West Virginia.

“There are no surprises. There are no unknowns,” Kotelnicki said. “And all the anxiety or the concern that comes with some of these unknown things, I don’t have them. It’s just a team of people who know each other, growing.”

Last spring, Kotelnicki said, he didn’t run a single shift or motion through two practices. These days, it’s implemented in virtually every call. The Lions could already hit the ground running as fall camp began Wednesday.

“I was telling Coach Franklin, ‘Coach, we’ve got everything in. If you want to do every situation the very first practice of fall camp, we could go do it,’” Kotelnicki said. “It’s all in, and guys are growing. We still gotta go out there and execute when it’s there, but I think it’s an enormous difference.”

With Kotelnicki and Allar returning, as well as other stars such as Nick Singleton and Dani Dennis-Sutton, Penn State’s 2025 expectations are sky high. The Lions could be the nation’s No. 1 team entering the year and have the makings of a national title favorite.

Some pressure comes with those expectations, but as Kotelnicki views it, that’s a good thing.

“I’ll tell our guys when we come back from the summer, ‘We haven’t scored a point or gained 1 yard in 2025, but everyone’s gonna tell us how awesome we are. We haven’t done (anything),’” Kotelnicki said. “Week to week will be the same thing. That’s how I think we manage it. That’s how we don’t let (the expectations) become too big.”

Franklin’s process has put Penn State in this position over the years. Yet, they still can’t lose sight of what got them here. That’s a lot easier to do with the knowledge, relationships and experience Kotelnicki carries into Year 2 in Happy Valley.

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