Of all the complexities that make up offensive football, one of the biggest factors in Penn State’s ability to succeed in 2024 will likely come down to a very simple dynamic: the wide receivers.
It’s not breaking news that Penn State’s receivers were lukewarm in 2023, an inconsistent room plagued with perpetual injuries to breakout hopeful Trey Wallace, potential and not much in the way of regular production. The issues there are of course are complex in their own right. Quarterback Drew Allar wasn’t perfect. Offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich lacked dexterity, among other things, and was fired because of it. It’s safe to say that presumed No. 1 target KeAndre Lambert-Smith underwhelmed; it’s also fair to say that things outside of his control made a difference too.
It leaves coach James Franklin with a challenging situation. The Nittany Lions are ostensibly a talented bunch, a collection of respected recruits and players who have performed in the past. If nothing else, even in a transfer portal world Franklin can’t entirely overhaul the room and expect success, but he can add former recruiting target and Ohio State Buckeye Julian Fleming. But on the whole, Franklin isn’t left with much more than making a coordinator change and keeping the faith. Sometimes easier said than done to do the latter.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had really a talent issue,” Franklin said earlier this spring. “At wideout if you look at our guy’s testing numbers, I think it’s as good as anywhere in the country. So I think you take that and now you take another year of experience. I think there’s some things that we can do offensively to help as well. [Receivers’ coach Marques Hagens] in his second year as the receivers coach, I think is going to be helpful as well.
“And then on top of that, I think Julian Fleming, he’s brought in an element of experience, maturity that I think has been really good and he is approaching things really the right way since he stepped on campus. So I didn’t really feel like we needed to go out and do a whole lot in a transfer portal, but we needed to make sure we had enough competition at every single position to bring out the best in not only those guys individually, but also us as a team. And I think Julian helps with that as well as the younger players already in our program taking the next step — and when I say younger players, that’s really all of them, including some of the veteran guys that now played a decent amount of football that we anticipate and expect fully them to take the next step.”
As for players’ review of Fleming so far, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to say anything bad in public about a teammate in the first place, let alone right out of the gate, but the appraisals are good for the former Buckeye. And if Fleming can get the stamp of approval from someone like longtime veteran tight end Tyler Warren, that’s something worth taking note of in mid-March.
Hands count for something, so does leadership, and so too does getting people to buy into what you’re all about. People follow that.
“I think he’s a really a great addition,” Warren told StateCollege.com “He brings a lot of experience. The older transfers usually come in and kind of understand that they won’t necessarily be the guys talking and telling people about what they’ve done. They come in they show us first and they get that respect from the team pretty quickly because we know what you’ve been doing on the field, but seeing your work when it’s not football and it’s not necessarily the fun stuff is important. I think he’s done a really good job. He’s a wise guy. He’s got a lot if wisdom to share with that wide receiver room and I think it’d be really good.”
The final piece, of course, is new offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki who sharpened his coaching teeth at Kansas, making a name for himself by way of getting the most out of what he had.
Time will tell what Penn State settles on as a Kotelnicki offense — he has run plenty of styles over the years — but it seems like a sure thing that he will showcase more creativity, flexibility and solutions to Penn State’s offensive issues than Yurcich did. That’s at least the bet Franklin is making on one of his three coordinator hires this offseason.
“I think there’s some things that you can do with the wide receivers in terms of motion, in terms of alignments like stacks and bunches,” Franklin said. “And things like that, that we can do to help our guys verse man coverage. I think that’s going to be really, really important for us as well. So I’d say the combination of you look at what they were able to do at Kansas what, we were able to do the last couple games [without Yurcich] play action pass, specifically, motions, shifts, formations, bunches, stacks, things like that. To make it more challenging for people in man coverage, I think those will probably the biggest things that jump out to us.”
How much Penn State shows on April 13 at the Blue White game remains to be seen, but rest assured, people will be watching on the brink of a brave new world in college football and the Big Ten.
