Film Study: Penn State football suffers complete system failure vs. Illini

The analysis of this column typically focuses solely on the performance of the players between the lines on the football field. The intent is to assess the competing plans of attack and how they countered one another in a particular game. It’s what I have trained in and where my particular strengths lie.

Plenty of fans and media members second-guess timeout usage and generally poor play as “coaching!” That’s not a particular rabbit hole that I’m comfortable going down nor do I find it generally useful or interesting. However, this game needs to have some context added to it to understand the frustration of what unfolded on Saturday.

The Penn State football and medical staff were the only group of individuals in possession of the most important information heading into this game: the health status of starting quarterback Sean Clifford.

“We just had way too many guys that played significant roles in that game that did not practice...Sean was one of those guys. We had confidence that it was going to happen but we weren’t sure. He got better every single day. The feedback we got that we were getting from the trainers and doctors and Sean was that they thought he’d be able to go today. But obviously, that was a day-to-day thing.”

As we all saw on Saturday, Clifford did eventually play and was less than 100 percent in his effort. His limited play put a capacitor on the offense as a whole, with a reduced, or eliminated rushing threat from the quarterback. While Clifford has been hit-or-miss on designed runs this season, he has been a major threat to break the pocket and extend plays. Both of those facets of his game were hampered on Saturday, making him essentially a pocket-only passer. Franklin said after the game that Clifford wasn’t instructed to shy away from running but they had to ‘be smart’.

So those are the parameters that offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich was working with on Saturday. Your fastball is gone, or at least most of the gas has been taken out of it. What do you do?

The Penn State offense came out of the gates with a run-heavy approach to start the game, which makes sense. Yet if there’s one thing we know about the Penn State rushing attack is that it’s consistently inconsistent. What did Penn State do over the bye week to change things schematically or personnel-wise to give it a kickstart?

Almost nothing.

Penn State came out with basically the same formations, personnel, and plays and tried to out-execute the Illinois defense. Now in fairness, some of these runs did work early and were genuinely good blocks by Eric Wilson and Rasheed Walker.

Yet the fact remains that Penn State had two weeks of knowledge that they wanted to rely on their running game and they chose to stick with what hadn’t been working so far. There were no new wrinkles, no innovative uses of formation or leverage. Simply, lining up and running inside zone, outside zone, and counter.

This is particularly frustrating to watch seeing what Illinois defensive identity is.

This formation is nothing new. In fact, Penn State has seen a variation of this in just about every game this season.

Ball State, Auburn, and Wisconsin all used variations of this tactic to frustrate the Penn State rushing attack so far this season. The key to this formation is the fact that the defensive ends are lined up on an inside shade of the tackles. This alters the typical blocking pattern for zone rushes. Instead of simply kicking out the defensive end, the tackle must now help block and then reach to the outside on the outside linebackers that are lined up two yards deep.

Against the outside zone, the defensive ends are positioned at an extreme gap distance for the guards to reach block. This means that the typically aiming point, the B gap (between the tackle and the guard) is essentially closed off. If the running back tries to bounce wide, the outside linebackers are in a position to force the ball back inside. Like Wisconsin, Illinois also was blitzing their middle linebacker over the center to get a free run at the ball. Two out of three times it led to a negative or no gain.

Here’s an example I gave during the Ball State game.

Just to drive this point home, Illinois has been running this front for several weeks now and it should not be a surprise that it was featured on Saturday.

It’s also a system that has not really been working for Illinois, especially up front. Nose tackle Keith Randolph Jr. is 6-5, 300 pounds. In other words, he’s undersized for a nose tackle. Teams had been able to move him off the spot and create space on the interior of the line. From weeks 4-6 Illinois had given up 275 yards rushing between the tackles. That included games against Purdue and “powerhouse” Charlotte. The obvious problem is that moving interior linemen is Penn State’s greatest weakness.

It was the rare battle of the movable object and the stoppable force.

What all of this boils down to is that Penn State’s rushing plan was to simply rep it out over the last two weeks. They knew coming into the game that they would be leaning on their offensive line and running backs to shoulder the load yet they didn’t change anything about a dysfunctional system. They were seemingly banking on the ability to move players off the ball. Typically this is something that doesn’t matter. The passing game dictates the action for Penn State, but again, the staff knew their passing game was at a disadvantage with an injured or backup quarterback.

By the third quarter, the team had abandoned the run entirely, with only two attempts in the entire frame.

What should they have done? That’s the question and one that Yurcich and his staff will have to find the answers to going forward. Should they play six O-linemen? What about a fullback? The tight ends are not blocking particularly well so adding them on the end of the formation is only adding bodies into the box, not blockers. Should Tyler Warren have gotten some snaps at quarterback? It’s a speculative and rather circular conversation that has no good answers because the offensive staff has not tried anything else for us to evaluate.

That’s not exactly true.

By the fourth quarter, in a desperate hail mary attempt to fix the situation, they flipped starting center Mike Miranda and right guard Juice Scruggs and then inserted backup Bryce Effner into the lineup.

The results? Mixed. Though Noah Cain averaged 5.0 yards a carry in the final quarter.

Moving Miranda from center was something that fans have asked about for the majority of the season and was something I did not think would happen. I think at this point it’s clear that the move should be made, especially given some of the positive signs in the fourth quarter last weekend. It was simply too little, too late.

By not having a more creative solution to the running game ready in case Plan “A” didn’t work, the Penn State offense defaulted to what it typically does, relying on Clifford to shoulder the load. Ironically, this situation is exactly what they were trying to avoid and yet, here we sit.

Yet without the use of his legs as a threat in the passing game, Clifford was forced to play primarily from the pocket and primarily with his mind as a passer. That version of Clifford appears to render the Penn State offense defunct.

It’s not just the defensive front that Bret Bielema changed after the first two weeks of the season when the Illini gave up 79 points to UTSA and Virginia in back-to-back weeks. The team also began to play much less man coverage and started to incorporate more complex zone concepts and post-snap movement.

They took it up to another notch on Saturday with some zany coverage drops that Clifford simply could not read. They played off of their tendency of man coverage and baited Clifford into a false pre-snap read. One play, in particular, was an example of an incredibly impressive subterfuge.

Clifford actually makes a good play here as it was one of the few times that he actually checked the ball down and got the available yards. Most of the game that Illinois was playing came off-screen for fans watching at home. They usually dropped into zone coverage in either Cover 3 or Cover 2, but how they got there was unique.

This next play depicts the crux of the problem for Penn State on Saturday. Clifford simply didn’t throw the ball on too many plays.

Throwing with anticipation is what separates the NFL-level quarterbacks and ones that can change games, from the rest. When Clifford’s legs were taken away from him he could not effectively break down zones and find easy throws that did not require anticipation. He ended up eating the ball on too many plays despite there being opportunities to make game-changing throws. Also, we’re going to ignore the holding call on this example because it had the best end zone view on film. The point stands.

When Clifford did get man coverage and diagnosed it before the snap, he was able to make throws and convert the down. Penn State was effective in generating space with natural pick plays that got receiver Parker Washington open for short gains and potential touchdowns. But Illinois threw timely blitzes and stunts at the offensive line to mitigate the damage and affect the quarterback’s accuracy.

While Illinois had a good game plan and they should be given the proper credit for making Penn State impotent on offense, it’s not like they’re an outstanding defense. There were plays to be made by the Nittany Lions but drops, bad decisions and a refusal to check the ball down led to stalled drives. Those punts that put the defense back on the field which was a recipe for disaster

It’s one thing if you lose to a team that has a better quarterback than you do. It’s another if you lose to Art Sitkowski and his 38 yards passing.

There are two sides to this story. The Penn State defense held an abysmal Illinois offense to just 10 points in regulation. They held the passing attack to the aforementioned 38 yards and forced three turnovers. Hell, they even scored on a fumble that was called back by officiating that once again called into question the competency of the crew. They nearly ended the game on a Jaquan Brisker dropped interception in overtime.

Yet the other job of the Penn State defense is to stop the offense and get the ball back for their inconsistent offense. They have been touted - by this writer and others across the country - as a top 10 defense in the nation. No matter the circumstances, elite defenses do not give up 365 yards rushing.

Period. End of analysis.

Is this being too hard on a unit that was on the football field for 36 and a half minutes plus overtime? Probably. They might have also had players that were playing injured based on Franklin’s comments after the game. But without that information, we simply have to judge the players on their performance and their performance dictated the time of possession as much as the offense did.

There’s not really a good place to start when breaking down a beat down but let’s get into it with Illinois brutally simplistic game plan.

Illinois played in heavy sets for most of the day and forced the Penn State defense to account for every gap along their run front. This means that players who normally are used to playing in run support had to step up and play in the box. On the play above, Illinois runs a simple zone concept to the field side of the formation. From tackle to tackle Penn State stuffs this run pretty well. The problem is that none of the defensive linemen were able to get penetration into the backfield and force the runner to cut back.

That means that Tariq Castro-Fields, who is playing outside contain, and Ji’Ayir Brown, who has to be sure to account for a play-action fake, are forced to step up and engage. Castro-Fields does his best to set the edge but Brown is late to diagnose and trigger into his gap. With no backside pursuit to help, it’s a big gain from simple formation.

"We just felt, the bigger we got, we felt we could dictate what we were going to get out of them a little bit better," Illinois head coach Bret Bielema said after the game.

He wasn’t wrong.

But it’s not just on the Penn State secondary for making poor attempts at the running back. The reason that every team in college football doesn’t play with six or seven offensive linemen is that it’s ultimately an easy attack to stop. Simply hold your gap, force the running back to bounce, and let the defense rally to the football. Most Power Five programs can stop teams from simply bullying them at the line of scrimmage. Penn State did not on Saturday. There’s no other way to put it, the Penn State defensive line was atrocious against Illinois.

The young defensive tackles that stepped in for PJ Mustipher were not up to the task of holding the offensive line off of the linebackers, who then had to fight through contact to get to the football.

Some pretty egregious holding calls were simply not seen or not called on Saturday. It’s very low on the list of reasons that Penn State lost, but it is a fact.

It’s also not fair to say that Penn State didn’t try several different things on Saturday to fix the issues they were having. As you saw above, they tried run stunting several times in several different ways. They tried true looping plays where one player replaces another, slants to the front side of zone plays, and slants to the backside gaps of run plays. Each time the problem was that someone lost their gap, typically a defensive tackle, and then a linebacker could not get off of the block of lineman that climbed to the second level.

This was the issue we discussed on the Daily Edition at the beginning of the week. Someone was going to need to step up and play better than they had been in the absence of Mustipher. While it would take a whole group, if only one or two players elevated their play, it would help bridge the gap. Yet Coziah Izzard and Brandon Smith, whom I singled out on the show, played up to their current standards in this game.

Illinois had an interesting, if not widely used wrinkle early in their running game that caught the Penn State defense off guard. They would bring motion at the snap that forced the linebacker to adjust gaps in case the ball was handed off to the jet motion player. By doing that they opened up gaps on the backside of the run and left a secondary player to fill them in run support. They paired this with a pulling concept, bringing two linemen to the play-side of the formation to the edge. It was a creative way to out-gap and out-flank the Penn State defense.

This is where Penn State’s linebackers had their worst performances. Smith could not fight through blocks and was late to diagnose and trigger to the point of attack. Even the normally effective Ellis Brooks gave up a few plays, though he was far from the problem on Saturday. With so many leaky holes in so many various concepts, Illinois didn’t need to throw the football. In fact, when they did, they gave Penn State a fighting chance.

This is really one of the most mystifying things I’ve seen Penn State do over the last several seasons. They simply refuse to stop the QB sneak. We’ve pointed it out several times over the years, including last season against Iowa where they scored from the 3-yard line on the play. The problem, as the broadcast pointed out correctly on Saturday, is that Pry does not line any players up on the center in these situations. This is a second and two but the point remains.

Penn State has faced 27 QB sneaks over the last three seasons and they’ve stopped four of them.

Yikes.

We’re not going to cover overtime in this article because after the first two periods, the entire process was basically a crapshoot. Neither team was playing good football and those plays have likely been dissected a hundred times at this point.

During regulation, Illinois was the better team in every facet of the game. They essentially declined to throw the football Saturday afternoon, which means by default, Penn State was the better passing team. Yet after what we took a look at today, that can be debated as well. It was a flat, uninspired performance from all but a handful of players and coaches.

And yet football is a game of matchups. There’s every likelihood that Penn State, designed to challenge and beat Ohio State, may give the Buckeyes a run for their money in Columbus next weekend. They have the secondary to match and can do things schematically that could cause young CJ Stroud to second-guess his decisions.

On the flip side, another week of rest for Clifford and the changes along the offensive line may yield some more positive results going forward in the running game. It’s just that those are a lot of ‘ifs’ to be counting on.

And just hope Ohio State forgets to run the football.

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