Resources: My charting, PSU game notes, PSU roster, CFBstats

It's a Franklin team: some ludicrous skill position players, a questionable offensive line, and five-stars all over the place. The main differences versus last year is the pass protection is a bit better, they have a ridiculously tough new top-100 running back we all remember from when Michigan was trying to get him, and the Speedy Eaglet is loose. A concern is the Joe Moorhead Space Ferrari stuff still looks very hard to defend, and Ricky Rahne is starting to get more comfortable at sticking to a few of them he understands instead of randomly punching buttons. Also the new "pocket" quarterback has transformed himself into a true dual threat. Also it's a white-out night game—yes, for the fourth time in five visits—because the rest of their home schedule is Idaho-Buffalo-Pitt-Purdue-Indiana-Rutgers, and heaven forbid Pitt ever think they're a rival.

The film: Iowa. At Kinnick. At night. Where they avoided getting Kinnick'd. Which might be the scariest thing. Also this was last week, Michigan is now a Cover 2 team, and even I wouldn't want to touch that game when they got outgained by Pitt at home and won because Narduzzi thinks math is for nerds.

For this they drew the notorious John O'Neill officiating crew, who were their usual, game-overshadowing selves. I usually try to avoid these clown shows because the players know how bad they are and start using it to get an edge. I did my best to try to ignore things that would get flagged normally unless it got too egregious.

Personnel: My diagram:

 

PDF version, full-size version (or click on the image)

I charted the running back rotation because they're trying to find snaps for four guys. True freshman RB Noah Cain (+23/-2 on 44 snaps) got the slight majority of snaps due to taking over the 4th quarter. He's the next one of Those guys. Classmate Devyn Ford (+1,-0 on 17 snaps) is a high-acceleration complement, and Journey Brown (+2/-0, –1 pass pro in 15 snaps) should settle into a 3rd down back role—he's a quasi receiver already and the most effective blocker the rare times an RB stays in the backfield for that. Former five-star Ricky Slade (+1/-0 on 4 snaps) appears to be the odd man out. For now Franklin's going to try to keep them all happy until circumstances force him to use Cain.

The receivers are hyper-talented, starting with slot KJ "Speedy Eaglet" Hamler (455 yards, 65% catch rate, 5 TDs, 11.4 YPT, +9/-0, one drop in this game), who is justifying every time we've had to hear Ace bitch in our Slack chat about Michigan not pursuing the slippery local prospect these many years. A lot of the offense goes through him or the tight ends. The #1 is "Baby Gronk" Pat Freiermuth (203 yards, 68% catch rate, "3" but really 4 TDs, 8.1 YPT, +7/-2 as a blocker) a very lengthy New England dude with a nose for the end zone who's maybe another offseason of weights away from Mackey-level. The comparison gets senior TE Nick Bowers (136 yards, 1 TD, 17 YPT, +2.5/-2, –1 pass pro) called a blocker, which is unfair to a 60/40 receiver-type who flexes outside a lot. Shortish sophomore WR Jahan Dotson (261 yards, 67% catch rate, 3 TDs, 12.4 YPT) is effective at finding spots underneath coverage. He's very different from classmate Justin Shorter, the composite 8th overall prospect last year because he's a tight end-sized person with the speed of a 4-star outside prospect. Shorter occasionally lines up as a tight end as well. The backups only get a handful of snaps; Chisema was stolen from the track team.

[after THE JUMP: Happy trails]

The offensive line is largely mitigated by play-action and RPOs—they're rarely asked to purely pass block, but against Iowa that meant only the guys facing Epenesa were really tested. They also have a few rotations that I don't understand. We'll work our way down the competency ladder. I went in thinking LG Steven Gonzalez (+8.5/-9, –1 pass pro) would get a star but he's merely solid. They run much of their running game through him and former top-30 prospect Michal (sic) Menet (+8/-5, –3 pass pro), a good athlete who doesn't screw up assignments (protection metric was 7/8 blitzers picked up). They're both strong and know where to be, but technique remains an issue; they lose a lot of plays with footwork that gets them stood up and rocked backwards.

Left tackle is a weighted rotation of top-100 (65th composite) redshirt freshman Rasheed Walker (+6/-0, –6 pass pro), whose day should be understood in the context of everybody gets Epenesa'd. There were many more plays where Walker used his athleticism to run Epenesa out of the play and open up a scramble lane for QB Sean Clifford. He cedes snaps still to Des Holmes (+0/+0, –4) for some reason—they'd be better off letting the freshman figure things out and keeping his upside on the field. The right guard position has an equal rotation between starter/6th man Mike Miranda (+1.5/-11, –0) who can pass block but often whiffs on guys or gets discarded in run blocking, and top-100 brick house CJ Thorpe (+2/-3, –0), who should have the job by now. And then there's our old friend RT Will Fries (+4/-16, –1), who's been starting for three years, has improved much as a pass blocker, sometimes makes an impressive heady veteran play, and still manages to dorf ten plays a game because he's got zero spacial awareness. The pass blocking might also be a mirage—PFF thought fellow onetime Michigan target Rashad Weaver did work against him in the Pitt game and no other opponent has much pass rush from his side.

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Spread, Pro-Style, or Hybrid? Spread. They're 100% shotgun, and 100% of their plays are holdovers from the Joe Moorhead era or Rahne ideas that play off of them and don't quite work. More interesting than the quarterback/running back alignment was the receiver alignment. The usual setup is 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE) and if they vary it's to have a second TE. Then they have different formations using the same personnel, happy to have a TE play a receiver, an RB go out to the slot, or even a receiver at tight end. Or they'll put all of their receivers way off to the field side together and try to run out the edges like Walt Bell-era Maryland.

Formation						Personnel		Playcall
Down Type	3-wide	4-wide	Bunch	Trips		Avg WRs		Pass	PA	RPO	Run
Standard (56)	75%	7%	16%	2%		2.62		20%	11%	18%	52%
Passing (24)	71%	25%	-	4%		3.00		48%	13%	4%	35%
Total (80)	59	10	9	2		2.73		22	9	11	37

(one false start not charted in the play-calling section)

Given how much they stick to their base personnel, you can read "2.62" average receivers on standard downs as replacing a receiver for a tight end 38% of the time.

The play-calling is a lot like how a Madden player will get into one formation and then alternate between his favorites from it for a drive. You have the bunch drive, then a few drives of 3-wide, then one where the TE is flexed, etc. The end of the game goes with whatever tree was most effective.

Third down strategy is super-conservative. It'll be hitches well below the sticks, or a QB draw, or in short yardage always a zone read or split zone. Between that and the 100% gun thing, they're one of the few teams on our schedule where 3rd and 1 doesn't feel doomed.

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL? They run a lot of Power stuff inside the tackles. The run game is 41% from the inside zone/split zone/arc zone game Franklin installed when he came to PSU, which he pairs with a bubble screen game. You can usually tell this is coming because he'll start Hamler on one side of the formation and put him in orbit motion to be the bubble read. The next chunk is power stuff—about 35% of their runs—which is Counter Trey, Down G, ISOs where a backside TE is essentially a puller, and a Power lead paired with an RPO read to a tight end in the flat. Every so often they try a WR screen and let Speedy Eaglet pick his way around the tacklers who are all ready for it. That leaves 20% for edge attackes, including that Bash/T fold play they nailed us with in 2016, and this option they used a ton against Iowa:

Hurry it up or grind it out? They like to pull out the tempo after a key first down, or when the refs give them a gift and an opponent captain is saying something about it. Penn State gets to the line quickly with a play, then checks the sideline. Same as it was under Moorhead.

Quarterback Dilithium Level (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): Part of the reason for optimism over this game in the offseason was their expected starting quarterback suddenly bailed to join Moorhead in Starkville, and one guy in any position to get the job was a redshirt sophomore considered "more of a pocket guy" to anyone who'd seen him him practice. Either Sean Clifford learned how to run in the offseason, or they were just flat-out lying:

That's the same play as the pitch I embedded a couple of sections back, and the first time Clifford kept after rather lazily pitching it every play before. Al Borges probably thought to himself this was a pitch too—I mean the DE is closer to the QB than the RB. That's the difference between people who see football as a strategic battle versus those who treat it like a sport. "How clever, to guess the end was going to spring out against the running back like that" the Borgesians say, as if it's unheard of for an athlete with a ball to give and read subtle cues in body language to get past his opponent. This is a tangent.

Clifford is enough of a run threat that they use him on draws on third and long all the time, and give him only a few reads before "scramble" because he pays those off.

Breakaway speed? Nah. Legs a big part of the offense, in which he's getting 6.2 YPC (sacks removed)? Yup. In face once you take out the sacks Clifford currently leads the team in rushing by a yard (311 on 49 carries to Noah Cain's 310 on 57). That's an 8.

HenneChart:

He's also getting 8.9 yards per pass attempt, though competition caveats are huge; he was 12/24 for 4.9 YPA in this game, his only against top 50 passing defense. Against Pitt, Clifford was 14/30. He's taken 10 sacks already this year. Watching the Iowa game I think he's got a lot of Shea Disease:

PSU at Iowa	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	PFF
Sean Clifford	2	6(4)	2		3	2(1)		1	6x	3	2		46%	68.9

He's good at avoiding turnover passes—those bad reads were when he didn't get to a second read and started dancing in the pocket or threw a low-percentage rocket where a receiver could dig it out for a push gain.

You will notice first and foremost that he can absolutely crank it. He was a top-200 recruit for a reason:

The big thing that stands out is the throwaways. Clifford was clearly spooked by Epenesa versus the left tackle situation, even when an RB was out there to deliver help. I often caught him moving about the pocket while missing something downfield about to break. Watch KJ Hamler (#1) the slot receiver.

That's his second read, the pocket is clean, and there's another second before the third read is supposed to cross his face. His eyes are at least downfield but that has its own negative because Clifford will start wandering around in the pocket and sack himself.

Frames Janklin Factor:

Frames punted four times from Iowa territory, though in his defense two were 4th and 10s and one was 4th and 18 on a night his defense was dominating and his offense was struggling. Kicking a field goal on 4th and inches from the Iowa 15 is understandable given the score situation. The last however…

This was after a long drive when they had just discovered Noah Cain is a feature back who can get you 4 yards when your blocking gets you zero. It was downed at the 4, fwiw.

Dangerman:

In the history of MGoBlog—which includes a season of Mike Hart—never has a running back come close to the +23/-2 I charted for true freshman IMG product Noah Cain, a solid 5-star to the other services but just 266th to 24/7 because they had some vision questions. Michigan's pursuit ended when all the big SEC schools (sans Bama) were hard after Cain, so it says something about Franklin and his program that Cain chose to join a backfield already stacked with young blue chips.

I did see the vision issues pop up occasionally, but Penn State's offense doesn't really leave many opportunities for the back to choose from more than one or two. When it comes to hitting the gap they gave him, the 5-star is on display. This is what coaches mean when they say "runs with violence":

Here's what the scouts mean by elite balance and acceleration:

Here's what the announcers mean when they say big-time players step up at crucial moments:

(Also check out the block by TE #87, Freiermuth in that one)

And here's a true freshman rotation piece taking over a game:

When I see that I just think what a shame it is that he has to take that kind of pounding for two more years before he's allowed to shop what he does on the open market.

The other guy out there getting yards the playcall and blocking didn't create is, sadly, the one elite receiver Michigan didn't get in 2017. You know him as KJ Hamler. We call him Speedy Eaglet.

Penn State's easiest yards this game came from leaving Hamler with their regular OLB. Their hardest yards came from throwing well-covered screens to Speedy Eaglet then watching him make something out of them anyway:

Fortunately for us, Rahne isn't as inventive about getting KJ's speed in space, since Moorhead was doing his stuff with a running back. Some people like to play counterfactuals where Josh Gattis has this guy. But I guess we don't use slots here at Michigan.

I also gave a star to Freiermuth, because he's very large and fast and that's a problem.

OVERVIEW: Penn State's offense came into this season with a lot of questions, and I think we can now answer a few of them.

1. Their heir apparent at quarterback and a bunch of skill position players bailed. Are they falling apart?

The opposite. As at Michigan, I think there were high-star players getting passed by other dudes, and blue chips aren't going to wait around for injuries when NFL careers and the like beckon. Sean Clifford has some pocket issues but you can see why Tommy Stevens wasn't guaranteed to win the job. Miles Sanders was a 2nd round pick, Ryan Bates had his degree and seems to be hanging on as an unsigned free agent. So you're left asking why Juwan Johnson left, and that's a guy who was 4th in targets last year and dogged for drops on an offense that features the slot receiver and tight end in the passing game. Normal attrition, overblown by the media market it's happening in. One can relate.

2. Franklin can certainly recruit, but can he develop players too?

Pat Freiermuth is the kind of tight end you'd expect Michigan to have added to the Gentry-McKeon-Schoonmacher line of tall and extremely athletic dudes from states the scouting services usually skip. Their hit rate on a lot of these high-star players seems in line with the national average. Maybe the sour grapes made some sense when high-profile recruits like Paris Palmer, Michal Menet, Ricky Slade and CJ Thorpe were struggling to break into the lineup last year. With Menet and Thorpe, that was just an unrealistic sense of offensive line development. Hamler is certainly developing on track. Dotson and Shorter are first-year starters, and producing. Rasheed Walker redshirted last year and looks like he'll be a good player in a few years.

3. Whatever happened to Deep State?

According to the Mathlete, and my eyes, Penn State has been living on the big play this year, often from Hamler, and Iowa mostly shut those down. Even so, Hamler's average reception—as a slot receiver—is at 17.5. His catch rate—AS A SLOT RECEIVER—is 65% Notably 5'11" outside receiver has about the same YPT and average depth of catch. Deep State is in the numbers, if not the highlights. What they're doing this year is attacking the seam underneath safeties and getting loads of YAC instead of stretching the safeties and trying to hit over them. The balls to the wall deep shots feature more against teams that play man coverage. They're still in the playbook. But when your top two receivers are shorter than your average blogger, there are more efficient ways to loosen coverage than jump balls.

4. How's Ricky Rahne doing at learning to drive the crazy newfangled hot rod Joe Moorhead left him?

He's better, still not Joe Moorhead. The playbook is still the same, with a few tweaks that I don't remember from 2017 and thought I'd see out of Michigan before Penn State to be honest. Here's Down G with a BASH read, the rare offensive play where you're reading a guy into a block:

If this guy even thinks of trying to not get kicked by the pulling guard he's got 200 pounds of running back flying out his edge. Big kick means big lane, and enough space to cut behind a LB who got sealed outside while following the puller. Clever.

On the other hand, Rahne's still an operator, not the guy who built this. He often has something work and runs the same play again, or sticks to just two things out of a certain look that a clever defense will pounce on, and then it goes in the scrap heap for the rest of the game. "Run it again" is a thing, as are scripted drives where they run the thing then the counter to the thing, then the thing again, and for the rest of the game when you see that look you know it's one or the other. By the end of this one the thing that worked was running Cain into stacked boxes because Iowa had figured out their answers for the rest.

5. I remember they were starting from scratch four years ago on the OL. How are they now?

The veterans interior guys are pretty good, albeit fundamentally full of some bad habits. I thought I was going to be raving about Steven Gonzalez and was even ready to declare Will Fries all grown up on PSU's second drive. Watch the jump by the left guard (#74) and the right tackle (#71) after the latter is beat to the intended lane and the former arrives to find his kickout waiting where he doesn't want him.

On the other hand, Fries still doesn't know who he's supposed to block most times, and they all get stood up a ton. Center they solved with a five-star who seems capable but too reliant on his talent. Right guard and left tackle are still rotations, with the latter on its umpteenth blue freshman of one sort or another, and the former playing the wrong guy because they've got an underclassman they don't trust.

We know this from self-inflicting the same issues on ourselves that Penn State's scandal inflicted on them: offensive line is about stability, and building back to that is hard. You go through a year with nobody, then you get some guys you have to play right away, then they're out of eligibility all at once and you're breaking in another generation of kids, and you have to stay employed for all of this.

Penn State solves this by leaning hard on the two guys they trust, and using RPOs to mitigate the times the defense can choose which guy to pick on. There are signs that if put in a situation where they have to pass block a lot, things could go south in a hurry.

Also if they're ever called for offensive pass interference

To a degree that's what happened last year. But in whiteout conditions in Happy Valley at night, with our DTs against the best part of their OL, and Daxton Hill not quite yet ready to deal with a KJ Hamler all day, there are too many ways for things to break open to expect none of them to do so. The interesting blitzes that worked against Iowa aren't on the table as much here, with the spread formations dictating fewer matchups in the box and thus fewer ways to disguise attacks.

6. Can we shut them down again though?

There are two questions we won't know until game day. The first is what does Don Brown have planned, because Rahne is predictable enough that you can get cute. The other is what do they have in Sean Clifford. He looks like a winner, especially against bad competition, but also one that gets spooked when things aren't going right for him. I don't know if that was Kinnick at night getting to him, or if it's part of his makeup, but if you can—and I'm not saying this will be easy with their more talented defense and Cain hammering away—you can put more of the game on Clifford's reads, it would seem there's a bounty of sacks to be had. I suggest we risk sending Agent Hudson on a mission deep into Clifford's chest cavity to find out.