Time of possession has never been the ultimate mark of quality football. Good teams can have the ball for very little time and good teams can have it for most of the game. What you do with the ball has always been more important than how long you have it.
But that doesn’t mean time of possession can’t be interesting.
Heading into Penn State’s Week 5 meeting against Northwestern, the Nittany Lions boast the nation’s highest time of possession average, clocking in at just over 37 minutes of possession per game. Like all outlier statistics this can often be the result of opponents — the truth is outside of West Virginia, Penn State has yet to face a team that hasn’t spent most of the game either not moving the ball or turning the ball over repeatedly.
On the other side of the coin, when Penn State has the ball it too hasn’t been particularly explosive. In fact, the Nittany Lions have just seven passing plays over 20 yards this season — the same number as Rutgers, and better than only seven teams at the Division I level. Nevertheless, even without the explosive plays Penn State has still managed to score, putting up 30 or more points in every game this season, boosting the nation’s longest active streak of such a mark to 11-straight games.
So where Penn State hasn’t scored with explosiveness it has scored with possession. So far this season, Penn State has put together 12 touchdown drives (of 20 so far this season) which have lasted four or more minutes. In 2022, the Nittany Lions had 13 such drives all year long. Even in a world where new clock rules are shortening the game by roughly 10 total plays, Penn State has managed to hit the 90 play mark twice in four contests. In turn, Penn State’s defense has been on the field for 86 fewer reps than it had been at this time last year according to coach James Franklin. That defense has benefited from it as well.
“I’m always looking for balance,” Franklin said on Tuesday. “We’re always looking for balance, and right now I think we have shown the ability to run to win, and we’ve shown the ability to pass to win. I think we need to be able to show that we can grind it out to win, which we have, but I also think we need to show that we can be explosive to win, as well. We’ve done that at times but probably not as much as we’ve grinded it out, but I would also say that also plays a little bit to how people were playing us.
“If you look at Iowa last week, they were playing soft on the perimeter and were not going to give up the big play. They were not going to let us throw it over their head. You can even go back and watch the tape. A lot of times when people are playing soft on the edge, you may not feel like you can run by them, but you may be able to run a double move, a stutter to get them to bite from off coverage and then be able to run by. We tried to run a stutter; we weren’t able to run by. They didn’t bite. I think some of it is how people are defending us in terms of trying to stop our two running backs by overloading the box, but then also playing soft either like Illinois with a safety at 25 yards deep in the middle of the field, in their way of stopping the explosive play, or with soft corners.”
Comparatively, Penn State has not averaged a time of possession greater than 33:41 over the course of a season since 2009. Under Franklin, Penn State has averaged less than 30 minutes of possession during five of his nine completed seasons at the helm. Again, it’s what’s you do with the ball that matters more than how long you have it. Nevertheless, Penn State has taken an approach this season which has limited mistakes — the Nittany Lions are the only team in the country without a turnover — and has slowly tenderized teams with a persistent running game, attempting the fifth-most rushes in the nation and the most among Power Five teams. All of this ground and pound has been complemented by a take-what-they-give-you passing attack.
It’s hard to quantify how much new clock rules themselves have organically added to Penn State’s time of possession, but it does pose an interesting wrinkle to some of the Nittany Lions’ biggest games of the year and a strange question to ponder: Is Penn State’s equation to beating Ohio State and Michigan long, methodical, game-shortening drives instead of explosiveness? It’s not as though the Nittany Lions are struggling to score, so who said you have to do it quickly?
“I will tell you this: In the locker room at halftime, that was a point that I made to the offense is do not get bored. When I say the offense, the offensive coaches,” Franklin added. “Do not get bored with grinding this game out because it is working for us in a style that is going to allow us to beat this Iowa football team. The fourth and 1 conversions, the sequencing of how we’re calling the plays, knowing when we’re going to go for it on fourth down, like grind it out. It wasn’t like we went at halftime and said we need to be more explosive in this game. No, let’s not get bored with how it’s going.
“What’s interesting is if you look at our yards per carry in the first half and then you look at our yards per carry in the third quarter and you look at our yards per carry in the fourth quarter, we just kind kept chipping way at them, and we didn’t average a great yards per carry in the first half, but in the third quarter and the fourth quarter it was excellent. Part of it is kind of sometimes just the style of how you have to play to win the game and to control the game.”
Back to Ohio State and Michigan, Penn State has averaged 26:23 in time of possession against Michigan since 2014 and 27:28 against Ohio State. The Nittany Lions have had complicated and explosive games against both programs, but Penn State — in the previous 18 meetings between the two — has led time of possession just five times and all five have been among the most competitive in the series [Ohio State 2017, 2018 and 2020 and Michigan 2020 and 2014].
Playing keep-away from the Big Ten’s best team’s isn’t usually a viable route to success, but if the Nittany Lions are able to continue to score with methodical drives, chew time off the clock and find a bit more potency when the explosive plays are there, there’s nothing saying that Penn State’s slow but steady approach won’t be the one that finally gets it over the hump.
