Ja’Juan Seider often thinks about what could’ve been last season. The talent was there, as was the opportunity. What lacked was the strategy and execution when it mattered most. Seider, now in his seventh year as Penn State’s running backs coach, could only watch from the sidelines as his elite rushing tandem was underutilized in losses to Ohio State and Michigan.
There are specific drives that still linger in Seider’s mind. Drives that could’ve been touchdowns, steps toward victory and the College Football Playoff, but instead were empty, ending only in punts and defeat. It’s typically the drives that began with successful rushes by Nick Singleton or Kaytron Allen and died out after scrapping the run.
“We had enough to win it. Yeah, we did. We may have not been great in an area, but if you watch Michigan, how’d they win? They played great and they played smart. What’d they do in the second half? They threw the ball one time,” Seider said on Saturday. “They let us make the mistakes.”
Seider was called upon to help correct these mistakes after it was already too late. Mike Yurcich was fired as offensive coordinator after the loss to the Wolverines, and Seider collaborated on play calling duties with tight ends coach Ty Howle for the season’s remainder. Feeding the rock to Singleton and Allen became more of a priority, as it likely should’ve been throughout fall.
It’s the same ideology new offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki has vowed to follow since he interviewed with James Franklin for the job. Get the best players the ball.
“Explosive plays, to me, goes hand-in-hand with getting your best players the ball,” Franklin said. “I felt like the last couple games of the year, you saw a significant change there. So, obviously with that, that kind of went through the interview process … the production of explosive plays and the data to back it up, not just saying in an interview, ‘Hey, I want to be explosive.’”
The data doesn’t lie. It took some time for Seider and Howle to find a footing against Rutgers, their first game as co-offensive coordinators. But before long, the Nittany Lions were a more explosive team than they’d been all season. This was apparent almost instantly into the regular-season finale at Michigan State, both in the pass and run games.
Singleton and Allen both surpassed 100 rushing yards against the Spartans. Only Allen had done so to that point in 2023, just once. Each running back saw an uptick in yards per carry over the three games after Yurcich’s firing, and quarterback Drew Allar threw two passes of over 60 yards in that span. He’d thrown just one to that point — in the season opener.
The entire coaching staff took note of the offense’s explosive breakthrough, and it became very clear that big-play minded coordinator Kotelnicki was the right man for the job. Seider and Howle have returned to their posts as position coaches, but remain involved in play calling with some valuable insight learned from last season.
“Coach K, he sees the big picture of it all. A lot of times we get focused as position coaches in our silos of how it affects my guy, or my guy’s gotta learn this. But really being able to see the big picture and understand what you’re asking everyone to do is a valuable experience,” Howle said.
Seider wants what everyone else wants. That’s a championship. No more lingering memories of drives wasted, of seasons tarnished. Penn State’s offense is in need of immediate improvement, and Seider can only wait for the results to follow what’s been an exciting offseason alongside an offensive coordinator with mounting confidence.
“We got to win. There’s no sugarcoating it. We got to win. You can’t just say 10-2, well, 10-2 may not be good enough,” Seider said. “We gotta win, and we have a schedule that we feel like we have an opportunity to win them all.”
