Phil's Take: McSorley poised for big senior season

Going into the 2017 football season, it appeared that for the first time since 1994, Penn State had a player on its roster with a legitimate chance of winning the Heisman Trophy.

Back in ’94, both Ki-Jana Carter and Kerry Collins were considered to be top-10 Heisman candidates. The Nittany Lions’ offense lived up to all the preseason expectations, but when the tabulations were complete, Carter finished second with 901 points, while Collins was fourth with 639. Colorado running back Rashaan Salaam was the runaway winner with 1,743 points.

Since 1994, four Penn State players have finished among the top five vote-getters for the Heisman Trophy. In 1997, Curtis Enis was fifth with 20 points, well behind winner Charles Woodson of Michigan, who totaled 1,815. Larry Johnson was third in 2002, totaling 726 points after surpassing 2,000 rushing yards in a dazzling senior season to finish two spots behind Southern California quarterback Carson Palmer (1,328 points). And in 2005, Michael Robinson was fifth with 49 points, four spots back of USC running back Reggie Bush (2,541 points).

Johnson and Robinson hadn’t been hyped in the preseason as Heisman hopefuls; the former rose up through the ranks of contenders as his yardage total skyrocketed throughout the season, while the latter saw his profile rise as Penn State came out of nowhere to claim a share of the Big Ten championship.

Saquon Barkley was a different story. Entering the 2017 season, many commentators were asserting that he had a great chance to become Penn State’s first Heisman Trophy winner since John Cappelletti in 1973. And for a while, it looked as though those predictions might come true. Barkley was the favorite for the trophy coming off his amazing performance in the Nittany Lions’ Big Ten opener at Iowa, in which he totaled 358 all-purpose yards in a come-from-behind victory.

But he was held below 100 yards rushing in six of Penn State’s eight remaining regular-season games, including back-to-back road losses at Ohio State and Michigan State. That was the end of his Heisman bid. Barkley finished fourth in the balloting, far behind the eventual winner, Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield.

The day after Penn State wrapped up its season with a 35-28 victory over Washington in the Fiesta Bowl, a game in which he rushed for 137 yards, Barkley announced that he would forgo his final season of eligibility. His decision came as no surprise to anyone, but now that he’s removed whatever traces of uncertainty may have lingered, it’s only natural to wonder when another legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate will emerge at Penn State.

The wait could prove to be short. A number of prominent commentators, from BTN studio analyst Howard Griffith to ESPN college football personality Paul Finebaum to Fiesta Bowl color analyst Greg McElroy and sideline reporter Tom Luginbill, have said that they see Trace McSorley as the No. 1 quarterback in the Big Ten going into the 2018 season and perhaps even a dark horse Heisman candidate.

“McSorley has the ‘it’ factor,” Griffith said. “If he can come close to matching next season what he was able to accomplish the last two years, he’ll find himself smack dab in the middle of the race for the Heisman Trophy.”

Finebaum, on his ESPN talk show, said that while McSorley wasn’t in his top 10, he could play himself into contention if he’s able to duplicate his performances from the 2016 and ’17 seasons.

Those are both very realistic appraisals. When you analyze McSorley’s statistics from his redshirt sophomore and junior seasons and compare them to what Ohio State’s J.T. Barrett accomplished during his four years in Columbus, you can make a strong case for McSorley’s inclusion on the list of 2018 Heisman Trophy contenders.

Statistically, Barrett was the best quarterback in Ohio State history. During his four seasons as a starter, he amassed 12,697 yards of total offense to set a Big Ten record. He passed for 9,434 yards and was responsible for 147 touchdowns.

Let’s compare McSorley’s statistical portfolio to Barrett’s: The rising senior quarterback has started for only two seasons but has already passed for 7,369 yards and rushed for 899. That amounts to 8,268 yards of total offense, and he has totaled 77 touchdowns: 59 passing and 18 rushing.

If McSorley’s final season is anything like the past two, he could approach or surpass Barrett’s career numbers in a number of statistical categories. Let’s say he passes for 3,600 yards in 2018, an entirely plausible number considering that he threw for 3,614 as a first-year starter in 2016 and 3,570 this past season. That would bring his career passing total to 10,969 yards, which would be third-best in Big Ten history behind former Purdue quarterbacks Drew Brees and Curtis Painter. Now let’s say McSorley duplicates his 2017 rushing total of 491 yards. That would raise his career rushing total to 1,390. With 12,359 yards of total offense in three starting seasons (plus an extended appearance in the TaxSlayer Bowl as a redshirt freshman), he would rank third in Big Ten history, 338 yards short of Barrett’s four-year total and 333 behind Brees.

Of course, these numbers are purely speculative on my part; we don’t know yet how Penn State’s offense is going to evolve with Barkley, Mike Gesicki and DaeSean Hamilton gone. But coming off of McSorley’s Fiesta Bowl performance against Washington, one has to think he is primed for that type of showing in 2018.

McSorley had the best game of his college career in Penn State’s victory over the Huskies, completing 32 of 41 passes for 342 yards and two touchdowns. The most impressive aspect of his afternoon was what he was able to accomplish on third down. McSorley moved the chains on all 12 of his third-down passing attempts, completing 12 passes for 193 yards and two touchdowns.

During the past two years, McSorley has mastered the offense that former coordinator Joe Moorhead put in place. Just look at how he was able to distribute the ball this past season. Four receivers had 50 or more catches, as Gesicki finished with 57 for 563 yards, followed by Juwan Johnson with 54 for 701 yards, Barkley with 54 for 632 yards and Hamilton with 53 for 857 yards. Fourteen receivers caught passes, and McSorley finished first in the Big Ten with an average of 274.6 passing yards per game. He also led the league with 4,061 yards of total offense, averaging 312.4 yards per game.

McSorley not only mastered Moorhead’s offense, he distributed the football to those 14 different receivers with precision.

“I think that’s one of the things we do a great job of,” coach James Franklin said in his Fiesta Bowl postgame press conference. “These guys are unselfish. We don’t have one receiver with 100 receptions who is leading the conference, but it makes it really difficult to defend us because there are so many guys who can hurt you – our tight ends, our receivers, our running backs – in the passing game.

“And Trace just does a great job of going through his progressions and taking what the defense gives.”

Franklin was still at Vanderbilt when he started recruiting McSorley, but he continued to pursue the three-star Virginia prospect after taking the Penn State job in January 2014. He was one of the few Football Bowl Subdivision coaches who recruited McSorley as a quarterback. It seemed as though Franklin saw something in the young prospect that others didn’t. Now, McSorley has a chance to rank among the Big Ten’s all-time total offense leaders, and maybe even contend for the Heisman Trophy in his final season.