More often than not, the most enjoyable college football teams enter the season with little to no expectations, either through a history of relative ineptitude, or through recent circumstances that seriously hamper a team’s outlook. In the case of Penn State in 2016, the latter was infinitely more true than the former.
The Nittany Lions were entering year three of the James Franklin era, fresh off of two 7-6 seasons that had created quite a bit of angst in Happy Valley, given the regression of one-time five-star quarterback Christian Hackenberg. Penn State was several years removed from the Joe Paterno scandal that had flipped the program on its head in 2011, but was still been feeling the impact through 2015.
A lot of the angst was due not just to Hackenberg’s struggles, but to the offense as a whole, which was generally atrocious in Franklin’s first two seasons under professional scam artist John Donovan, who has somehow convinced Washington to hire him to ruin its offense for the next two seasons. The offensive line was a turnstile, and while freshman halfback Saquon Barkley was encouraging in 2015, he didn’t seem ready to carry an offense.
So, entering the 2016 season, a lot of the expectations surrounding Penn State involved the words “steady improvement on the line” and “steps forward in the passing game” as reasonable goals for the Nittany Lions. A new undersized and under-recruited starting quarterback in Trace McSorley didn’t make the outlook much better.
Barkley’s return did give some reason for optimism, though, as did the addition of FCS offensive coaching guru Joe Moorhead, who was fresh off of a phenomenal tenure at Fordham, where he operated one of the most electric offenses in America. His usage of run-pass options (will be referred to as RPO from here on out) made him an intriguing fit in the bigger, slower Big Ten, and there was hope that he could direct attention away from a Penn State line that was still average at best.
Early struggles did little to dissuade the prevailing opinion that Penn State was still very much rebuilding, with a close loss to Pitt and a blowout at the hand of Michigan in the first four games, along with less-than-impressive performances against Kent State and Temple. After a close win over Minnesota and a 38-14 beating of Maryland, Penn State upset Ohio State in Happy Valley, and Moorhead’s offense shot directly into the stratosphere.
As soon as that Ohio State game ended, Penn State looked like a completely different team. Everything clicked. The RPOs, the way that Moorhead wanted deep balls thrown, everything just snapped into place. Penn State rattled off seven straight games with at least 38 points, averaging 45.6 points per game. It was an explosive, joyous occasion, and because of the lowered expectations entering the season (and following that slow start), watching Penn State’s offense become a supernova was one of the most enjoyable and exciting college football storylines of the year, if not the decade. It was a jolt to the college football landscape that had become (and still is!) a bit too reliant on the same three teams always winning.
Even without playoff hardware to show for it, that Penn State run has been cemented in college football lore for how explosive and how unique the offense was, with Barkley terrorizing defenses and McSorley lobbing passes up seemingly at random, only for every single one to connect with a target.
So, how did Moorhead do it?
Funny enough, it was actually a fairly old school approach that launched Penn State forward. Moorhead built his offense around Barkley, following in the mold that was set in the 1970s in places like USC and Ohio State, with workhorse halfbacks serving as the focal point of the offense, opening up everything else around them. Barkley’s ability as both a runner and a receiver allowed Moorhead to modernize that idea, using him in basically every possible way to draw as much of the defense’s attention as he could, to open up room for the rest of the offense.
Still, Moorhead had a less-than-great offensive line to work around, so he did what every college football coach should do, and he implemented a zone blocking scheme and paired it with read option to create numbers advantages.
You see that here, with McSorley isolating the edge rusher. Because USC has three players on the line and three behind them at linebacker, isolating that end frees up the right tackle to get to the second level and take on a linebacker trying to set the edge. Mike Gesicki slides in from the opposite tight end slot to take on that edge rusher and prevent him from sliding back inside to catch Barkley from behind.
The center blocks the nose tackle, the left tackle gets an end, and both guards get into the second level to wall off those last two linebackers, giving Barkley an easy lane into the defense. USC is in cover two, but neither of the safeties are able to make a play once Barkley hits full speed. It’s a poorly designed defense, but a well-blocked and well-executed run for Penn State.
Later in the game, Penn State runs this inside zone look again, with the tight end coming across to take on the isolated end. USC is undermanned again, with six in the box and a seventh coming in from the safety spot, though he takes himself out of the play by completely misreading the handoff.
With even numbers, Penn State rolls again, and Barkley has a lane for another first down. The Nittany Lions were able to run all over USC in this game because the Trojans took the wrong approach to stopping them: they tried to cut off everything else, and force Barkley to beat them.
It’s an easy mistake to make. Penn State was so dominant on the back half of its schedule because of how much everything ran through Barkley, and when teams like Wisconsin had tried to isolate and shut him down, it only opened up the rest of the offense. Then , when the defense adapts, Barkley still gets his numbers, he just does it in the second half.
USC figured that if it took away everything else by dedicating an extra defender to covering the pass, it could create enough McSorley mistakes that Penn State would be in too deep of a hole to win with the ground game. Obviously USC did actually go on to win this game, but that was more of a matter of good USC offense rather than good USC defense. Giving Barkley this much room didn’t make the Penn State offense one-dimensional, it just made everything else that much more dangerous. Barkley brought defenders in even when the defense was designed for them to stay out, and Penn State was able to use that to open up the rest of the offense.
It’s almost like how Steph Curry worked on the prime Golden State Warriors. Even when you set out specifically to defend his teammates rather than dedicating several guys to him, he’s so dominant that defenders just gravitate towards him, opening up the game for everybody else. Barkley was so good that defenses were forced to pay attention to him, even when they didn’t want to.
Moorhead knew that, and as soon as he saw it happening, he’d dial up a play like this. This is an RPO. You can tell by watching the linemen, who are absolutely committing a penalty here, but I’m no snitch, so you didn’t hear it from me. McSorley is reading the defensive end for the handoff, and when he stays put, the target becomes Gesicki, who suddenly has single coverage with a safety.
Because those linebackers have gravitated in to take on what they thought was a run, McSorley just has to put the ball up for his big target to go get, because the rest of the defense has already abandoned their assignments. RPOs are almost unstoppable as is, but when you add this QB-HB-TE trio into one, there’s really no good solution, other than to just not play Penn State.
Barkley’s threat carried into the passing game as well, both as a target and as a play action decoy. Here, he’s serving only as a checkdown option in the flats, but with Wisconsin running cover 2, he pulls one of those underneath defenders into his area, and away from the zone he should be covering.
With a drag route coming across as well to keep the other underneath defenders from dropping too deep, Gesicki is able to slip into an uncovered part of the field, giving McSorley an open throw for a first down. Again, this works with a lot of running backs, but adding Barkley to the fold just makes it that much more difficult to cover.
It was the same story on play action. The safeties and linebacker all over-play the run fake here because they’re afraid to be gashed by it. With a corner playing the outside on Saeed Blacknall, and only one safety over the top that didn’t fall for the run fake, McSorley makes a pass that looks short, but was actually perfect for the play, hitting his wideout on the inside shoulder away from the cornerback, and shallow enough that the safety is caught out of position.
Blacknall makes the adjustments, pulls it in while keeping his stride, and has an easy route to the end zone. A lot of McSorley’s throws looked like this, where it almost seems as though he was lacking the arm power needed to be a “big-time” quarterback, but they were almost always purposeful. This is by design, it’s what McSorley is told to do. He caught a lot of flack in his college career for not throwing “correctly” but he was doing what he was asked to do, and it worked really damn well against basically everyone that Penn State played.
When you add this sort of passing attack, one predicated around splitting the defense apart and then hitting on huge plays into the open space, onto a rushing attack led by the best halfback in the nation, it becomes very easy to manipulate a defense.
It also becomes very easy to dial up the football equivalent of a walk-off home run, by building up to a single play for the entire game, slowly conditioning the defense into defending you a certain way. Then, as soon as they get comfortable, and they start to understand that Barkley is largely a decoy in the passing game, you call God’s perfect play: the wheel.
Walk-off.
Up next: Greg Schiano Is In Football Hell
Graphics by Kristen Lillemoen