Mike Yurcich Rates Penn State's Offense: 'Not Good Enough'
Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich ranked the team's nine-overtime loss to Illinois this season among the worst of his career. Then he corrected himself.
"Not one of the most, the most frustrating times that I've ever had," Yurcich said. "They were playing coverage, they were dropping eight, playing with safeties high, you'd better run the ball, and that's what we tried to do..."
With that, Yurcich's Zoom session on bowl media day ended and so did his explanation of Penn State's most inexplicable game of 2021. Though Yurcich couldn't provide closure on that 20-18 loss to Illinois, he did make clear his feelings about the season.
This wasn't the offense Yurcich anticipated running at Penn State. And it won't be the offense he runs in the future.
"Not good enough," Yurcich said. "A lot of room to improve. We didn't execute at the level that we need to execute at, so I take the blame. It solely falls on my shoulders. And we'll get better. I'll get better.
"We're going to work really hard to get us to a championship-level offense, and we're not there yet. We're going to continue to strive and drive and do all the things necessary to compete and get to that level, or I'm going to die trying."
Yurcich arrived at Penn State like a lightning bolt last winter, when head coach James Franklin hired Yurcich and removed Kirk Ciarrocca after one season. Franklin had tried to hire Yurcich before, but the timing wasn't right. So when this opportunity opened, Franklin jumped.
And why not? Yurcich's offenses score points. In 2020, his Texas offense ranked eighth nationally (42.7 points per game). At Oklahoma State, his offenses averaged 38 points and 478.3 yards per game over six seasons
But this season? Penn State averaged 26.3 points per game to rank 81st nationally. It is the team's worst scoring season since 2015 (23.2 ppg). The offense did not score more than 28 points against a Power 5 team in 2021.
Penn State's run game even was more uncharacteristic. The Lions are 118th nationally in rushing offense at 106.58 yards per game, on target to rank as the second-lowest season average in program history. The lowest: Franklin's first season of 2014 (101.9).
If Penn State doesn't field a 100-yard rusher in the Outback Bowl, this will mark the first season without one since 1978. That was a unique season in which Penn State still rushed for 2,525 yards and 21 touchdowns, led by Matt Suhey's 720 yards.
This year, Penn State has rushed for just 1,277 yards and 11 touchdowns, with Keyvone Lee leading with 495 yards.
"Obviously our run game needs to improve," Yurcich said.
Franklin deferred for now on evaluating Yurcich, saying he would save that for the offseason, during which he promised an offensive "deep dive."
"Obviously, we would have loved to have put more points on the board and been more explosive and been more consistent," Franklin said. "And that's really what we will spend a lot of time doing once the season is ended."
Yurcich brought up a particular area of emphasis: short-yardage situations. According to Sports Info Solutions, the Lions ranked last in the Big Ten in rushing on downs of 1-3 yards. Penn State averaged a conference-low 2.6 yards per attempt in those situations.
"When we go back and we look at different things, I think one thing that stands out for us is short-yardage execution," Yurcich said. "That's one of the things that we're currently looking at in bold print and trying to evaluate: Why the lack of execution there? So you look at the reasons, and sometimes it's execution. It's a mistake here, it's a mistake there.
"... We tried to put, you know, who's the mole on it? So we go around and we look at, was it the call? Was it a personnel issue? Was it a mental mistake? A physical mistake? And we charted all those things. And what you find out is, it's a little bit of everything. That's what happens."
Though Yurcich worked at Ohio State as passing coordinator in 2019, this was his first season as an offensive coordinator in the Big Ten. Yurcich felt confident that his system will work in the conference and could deliver results against Big Ten defenses.
It's a matter of establishing an offensive identity.
"We have to continue to play to our personal strengths," Yurcich said. "We have to continue to break tendencies. And at the end of the day, we've got to continue to be more physical, tough-minded, and really just focus on the basics of football. The basic rules. We can sit here and get fancy all day, but at the end of the day, we've got to have something to put our hat on. You know, you've got to have that identity, and we tried to establish that identity.
"We wanted to come downhill at you and we wanted to get under center at times, and we wanted to be physical. We're gonna continue and stay steady in the boat with our plan."
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