Is Penn State This Year's Notre Dame?
The Nittany Lions have the right collection of elite coaching and blue-chippers to contend, except in one critical area. Notre Dame knows this all too well.
Hello and welcome to Vol. 1 Issue 11 of The Sports Renaissance Man, a daily sports newsletter where I am free to geek out and create my own little mini-newspaper of sorts. It would be lovely and quite helpful if you subscribed by entering your email below and became one of the paying subscribers to ensure I can keep this newsletter going. Happy reading.
Through three weeks of the 2021 college football season, you would be hard-pressed to find a Power 5 program with more impressive wins to this point than Penn State. First, they went on the road and took down the always formidable Wisconsin Badgers. Then, they returned home under the lights in Happy Valley and took down the always formidable Auburn Tigers. Two programs with preseason College Football Playoff aspirations if things broke right with their quarterbacks Graham Mertz and Bo Nix.
The Nittany Lions had other plans.
They defeated both to keep their own CFP aspirations alive. With Ohio State’s defense in rough shape, Iowa’s offense perpetually in rough shape and Michigan’s perfectly decent 3-0 start, there are lots of reasons for optimism in State College.
What gives you pause for the Nittany Lions is Sean Clifford at quarterback. To this point, Clifford has done enough to keep Penn State undefeated. It is also true that Penn State is 82nd this season in plays of 10-plus yards downfield, per CFBStats. For comparison’s sake, Vanderbilt and Penn State are even in this department with 40 total. Ole Miss, also 3-0 this season, has 78 plays of 10-plus yards, almost doubling the Nittany Lions. In 2020, Alabama led college football with this stat and won another national championship. In 2019, LSU led college football with this stat and won another national championship. Penn State traded out offensive coordinators this offseason from Kirk Ciarrocca for Mike Yurcich to produce the kind of explosive plays needed to win a lot of football games and realistically contend for a national title like the Buckeyes do year over year.
The Nittany Lions remind me a lot of the Fighting Irish. The latter has found themselves in this predicament where the offense and the quarterback lag behind the defense and skill talent around them. The Nittany Lions may be 82nd in explosive plays of 10-plus yards, but they’re also 18th in defensive yards per play to this point. They shut down Auburn and Wisconsin. They have the pieces to limit and frustrate every remaining quarterback on their schedule. In 2020, the Irish were 25th in yards allowed per game, but in 2019 and 2018, Kelly’s defenses were 8th and 14th in yards per play, respectively, while the offenses in those years were 29th and 47th in yards per play. The disparity kept them from truly being able to run the CFP gauntlet with the likes of Oklahoma, Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia and Alabama. This sort of disparity separates the good from the great in college football.
You can’t help but think about Penn State’s big-picture ceiling as you watch them and see how well-coached they are on both sides of the ball and not be frustrated that Clifford is under center this year. The reason there is optimism in Athens this fall is not because of the stellar defense, it’s because of the five-star quarterback J.T. Daniels. Sure, Clemson’s offense has sputtered out of the gate, but D.J. Uiagalelei still has the five-star upside he flashed against Notre Dame in 2020. Spencer Rattler was a preseason No. 1 overall selection in a lot of NFL mock drafts for 2022. The reason you can’t write off the Buckeyes is not that the defense can be fixed midseason, it’s because Stroud may be explosive enough to propel the Buckeyes and those receivers to the playoff in spite of the defense. Clifford isn’t that conversation like Ian Book was not in that conversation. Like Jake Browning was not in that conversation. You can be good with Spencer Petras, Skylar Thompson, Will Levis, Hendon Hooker, but you cannot be great with these quarterbacks. You cannot get over that final hump in January.
Did I mention how frustrating this must be for Nittany Lions fans?
The blue-chip ratio is the most important data point in college football for Power 5 programs year-over-year. If your team does not make the list, your team is not winning a national title. It is literally that simple. Penn State, along with 16 other schools made the list in 2021. Only Michigan and Ohio State from the Big Ten also made the cut. And, wouldn’t you know it, the Nittany Lions were one percent higher in their ratio than the Irish at 56 percent versus 55 percent.
These two programs could not be intertwined on their CFP journey. With an actual star at quarterback, like a Trace McSorely or a Brady Quinn from years ago, we are having a different conversation about these two programs. Instead, we are wondering if Sean Clifford can best Bryce Young and/or Rattler, Daniels, D.J. in a two-game gauntlet. It’s not realistic. You put Zach Wilson on the 2020 Golden Domers, who knows.
I don’t advise Penn State fans, or Notre Dame fans for that matter, to fret over their quarterback limitations. You can count on one hand the programs that have the quarterback that can win a title any given season. There are 130 FBS teams and Penn State is one of the ten-best teams amongst them. That’s really cool and really hard to do. The Nittany Lions are on their way to a historic season in Happy Valley, they should win a lot of games and Clifford is gutsy as heck and clearly cares about his school. He’s easy to root for, even if you would kill to have Trace McSorely under center for this kind of season.
This is why you play the games on the field. To see if a non-star quarterback can still win a title in today’s college football when the team has the right mixture of elite coaching and elite blue-chip personnel as the Nittany Lions and Fighting Irish always have. Just enjoy the ride and who knows what kind of confluence of events are on the horizon that could change everything.
Today on The Chase Thomas Podcast
Blue Wire's Chase Thomas is joined by fellow University of North Georgia alumni Matt Green to talk about what happened in Florida vs. Alabama, no great teams thus far in college football, Colorado's horrid offense, a bad call in Miss State vs. Memphis, BYU holding the fort against Arizona State, Bo Nix, Auburn vs. Penn State and much more College Football Week 3 analysis (1:00). Then, 49ers Hub's Evan Sowards on NFL Week 2 action, the 49ers surviving the Eagles, the horrible Falcons, NFL's taunting penalty problem, Lamar Jackson carrying the load against KC, Houston's QB room without Tyrod Taylor and much more (75:00). Then, Auburn alum Shea Brennaman joins the program to talk all things Auburn vs. Penn State, what happened, where they're going with Bo Nix, issues with the defensive line, Tank Bigsby and much more (140:00).
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