UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Mike Yurcich had a nice, canned answer. Which sounded great, and included three parts.
The question?
What do you want the identity of Penn State's offense to be, given how much the running game struggled last season?
"We always want to be a physical offense," said Yurcich, the second-year offensive coordinator. "We want to be a smart offense. And we want to be a very skilled offense. I think those are the three things that we try to identify with as an offense each and every year."
OK, so let's dissect those three areas.
LAST THING FIRST
The third component Yurcich mentioned is to be a very skilled offense. Penn State always has a bunch of really skilled guys, and last year was no different with the likes of receivers Jahan Dotson and Parker Washington, some decent running backs, solid tight ends and a quarterback in Sean Clifford who, for all of his faults, actually is pretty skilled.
There will be a lot of good skill guys on the offense this year, too, including freshman running back Nick Singleton and quarterback Drew Allar, the top recruits in the nation at their respective positions.
So, the good news is that Penn State checks this box when it comes to Yurcich's identity components.
THE BAD NEWS
Alright, we started with the good news, which was simple. Now comes the hard part.
"We always want to be a physical offense," Yurcich said.
The Nittany Lions failed miserably at this last season. The offensive line was awful at run blocking, to the point where you couldn't rely on any type of push on most running plays, and especially in short-yardage situations on third and fourth down.
So, I followed up Yurcich's canned response on his three elements with this question:
"How about from an offensive line standpoint, then? It didn't look like the offensive line was as physical as it needed to be last year, so how do you get to that point?"
"Well, you continue to practice, you continue to recruit, you continue to work on your individual techniques and your skills and your communication," Yurcich said. "It's just an overall process with each position, not just offensive line, but at any position on the football field. It goes from strength training, to film study, to your individual work, to your nutrition, to your rest. I mean, it's all encompassing, it's a holistic approach, and so it's something that we work on, something our players are working on every day."
Ummm, that was a whole bunch of words to not really say a whole lot.
Here's the thing with Yurcich: He doesn't want to talk about last year, which took a lot of luster off his previously bright star. He doesn't want to be pressed on how bad the offensive line was. He doesn't want to admit that his scheme made it appear the linemen weren't ready to run block because they were always just standing straight up or going backwards most of the time as part of the RPO offense.
He wants a physical offensive presence, but we didn't really see much proof of that last year.
A GREAT QUESTION?
This was a comical and revealing bit of give and take between Yurcich and reporters Neil Rudel from the Altoona Mirror and Thomas Frank Carr from BlueWhite Illustrated. It sheds a little insight on how things can work between the media and a source during a press conference, and what exactly is the goal of asking questions.
"James (Franklin) talked about an exercise that he had the staff do about short-yardage situations relative to the running game. Do you think you guys showed enough confidence in the running game last year?" Rudel asked.
Yurcich didn't quite get the question, so he asked for it to be repeated.
"Do you think you guys showed enough confidence in the run game?" was repeated.
"Are you talking about short yardage?" Yurcich replied, with Rudel acknowledging yes.
"A lot of room to grow," Yurcich said. "I've said that several times, and I've been asked about last year several times, and I've addressed that several times. And we're we're about to embark on summer training here and workouts and fall camp, and we're really focused on this year and working on improving."
Again, Yurcich isn't so much interested in rehashing last year's problems. And many coaches would feel the same way, since they always like to look forward.
At that point, Carr followed up with a schematic question, which he likes to ask.
"Can I ask it in a different way?" Carr said. "Previously, you've used a lot of outside zone at other stops like Oklahoma State. And last season, it seemed like it was not as heavily used in your system. Is that a big deal, is it not a big deal? Is that something that you're focusing on in this season to try and bring that into your offense?"
Yurcich replied with this: "That's another great question. If we were working on more schemes and in particular fashion, whether it be power schemes, pull schemes, mid-zone wing T, buck sweep, I wouldn't tell you what we're working on anyway. So you can ask but ..."
Rudel followed with this great quip: "So why is that a great question?"
Maybe you had to be there, or maybe you just have to be in the media, but that line was hilarious for one reason. The purpose of a question is to draw out an answer that provides information. And Yurcich clearly didn't provide any information with his answer to Carr's question, which was indeed a good one but, ultimately, was not answered.
The point of all this is to show that, even when he's asked a good question on a tough subject, Yurcich has taken to the notion of just throwing out a bunch of words and not really giving fans any real detail or insight.
Hey, look, a lot of coaches do that. But with this coach on this particular team, coming off a horrendous offensive season that was a massive letdown, it's not unreasonable to want to seek answers to what the plan is to fix the problems. Because there were tons of problems last year.
Yurcich made a point of saying that he wouldn't reveal what the fixes are anyway, and of course, why should he at this point in the summer? Still, there's just an air of overconfidence -- even arrogance -- coming from Yurcich when he's asked this kind of stuff, and to be honest, it's offputting to a degree because it's up to him to find a way to answer these kinds of questions in a way that can put fans at ease with candid insight, rather than sounding perturbed that he's even getting asked.
A SMART OFFENSE
This was the middle component Yurcich mentioned in his three-pronged answer about offensive identity. And it indeed will be something very important to watch this season -- although perhaps not for the reasons he may have been thinking about.
Yurcich surely meant the players need to be making good decisions, protecting the ball, reading defenses, not turning it over, etc.
All of that is true.
But from this view, having a smart offense falls squarely on Yurcich and Franklin. Because what we saw last year was not smart by a long shot.
The way the offensive line was playing -- the overall scheme -- was poor from the beginning and really didn't improve all season. Now, when you prepare all offseason to play a certain way, it's gotta be tough to change direction on a dime in the middle of the season. But that's exactly what Penn State should have been doing once it became apparent that the line was not put into a good position at all when it came to run blocking.
Yurcich stuck to his guns with the system he's been working with for years, and seemed too reluctant to change when it was clear change was needed.
That wasn't smart.
Then came the Michigan State and Arkansas games. The epitome of not being smart.
The Spartans had the worst pass defense in the country, and yet Yurcich kept calling running plays all day. It was beyond absurd.
In the Outback Bowl, Penn State miraculously was running the ball a little better early, then went away from it for a long stretch. Again, just not a smart approach.
So, when it comes to finding an identity on offense this fall, we can put a lot of emphasis on the offensive line improving, but Yurcich also has to show that he learned his lessons from last season.
