At long last, a real team! After nine long weeks of drab opposition whose offensive FFFFs amounted to "will they move the ball? No", we finally have an opposing offense on tap that is mildly interesting. Of course, the Penn State offense haven't been world-beaters this season, apparent to anyone who watched the Ohio State-Penn State game live, but they are more talented and have far more weapons than any offense on the schedule previously. Get excited! 

 

The Film: There's a very obvious game to go with here, the OSU-PSU game. Ohio State is one of the two best defenses that Penn State has faced so far and it is a far more recent game than the Iowa matchup, which was in late September. That made it an easy choice, but I also am going to drop a few clips in from the most recent performance for PSU against Maryland, as it was the Nittanys' best offensive showing of the season. 

Personnel: Click for big. 

Penn State's QB for this contest is Drew Allar, a 5* true sophomore out of Medina, Ohio. Allar's arrival at the helm of the offense was much hyped this season after spending the 2022 campaign studying under Sean Clifford. Allar played a few snaps in garbage time against Michigan last season, but this will be the first time since 2018 that anyone other than Clifford starts for PSU against Michigan. Allar is a big kid with a big arm whose season has been defined by a remarkably low average depth of target and general inconsistency. He will feature heavily in this piece. 

The Nittany Lions return their two blue chip backs from last season, Kaytron Allen and Nick Singleton. These two players were true freshmen last season when they edged past more experienced players to gobble up carries and this year they've owned the backfield all to themselves. Minnesota transfer Tre Potts is the nominal 3rd back, but he has just 20 carries to Allen and Singleton's combined 240. Of those 240, there's a near even split: Singleton has 121 and Allen has 119. The general consensus among PSU fans is that Allen's the more natural runner, backed up by his YPC clip of 4.8 to Singleton's 4.0. Both are talented players but their success on the ground has been constrained by anemic run blocking. 

If there's one area of this offense that looks very different from your typical Penn State squad under James Franklin, it's the receiver group. The closest thing to the level of receiver star PSU once had is the Dangerman for this piece, KeAndre Lambert-Smith. KLS is a good player, but I liked him more on last year's PSU squad, when the Lions had two other talented receivers to pair with him in Washington and Mitchell Tinsley. This year KLS is the only show in town, 51 catches for 645 yards while the next closest receiver of any kind has 24 catches and 246 yards. 

The other wide receivers besides KLS are particularly lacking, as the #2 and #3 receivers by catches/yardage are both TEs. The next two WRs on the depth chart below Lambert-Smith are Kent State transfer Dante Cephas and Harrison Wallace III, both of whom are extremely "meh". Dig deeper and it gets even thinner, with FSU transfer Malik McClain and Liam Clifford (brother of Sean) making next to no impact this season. Clifford played a decent bit in the game I charted and I felt he was dreadful. 

In the absence of supporting cast help for Lambert-Smith, PSU has been forced to play out of 12 personnel often this season, leaning on starting TEs Theo Johnson and Tyler Warren. Johnson, one-time blue chip recruit that Michigan sought after out of Windsor, Ontario, has not made the leap many hoped for, with subpar PFF grades across the board and a negligible impact in the team's biggest game to date (against OSU). Warren has been a multi-year blocking TE, forced into receiving duty this season with more catches in 2023 than he had in 2021-22 combined. PSU rarely ever uses a TE beyond these two, but if they do it's Khalil Dinkins. 

It's hard to discuss the PSU Offense's performance this season without honing in on the offensive line. After much offseason chatter about how Penn State would FINALLY HAVE A GOOD OFFENSIVE LINE, the bluster has (surprise!) not come to pass. LT Olu Fashanu has gotten considerable NFL hype but so far has only showcased that ability as a pass-blocker. At RT there may be the single biggest surprise of this OL, Caedan Wallace is not cyan'd after two straight seasons of doing so. The veteran appears to have improved by some amount, as he was not in the bottom two PSU OL against Ohio State (his PFF grades are solid too). However, is it really a good thing if Caedan Wallace is not one of your worst OL?  

I would say no, because the interior of the line looks real sketchy. Following in the theme of the tackles, push on the interior in the run game has been close to nonexistent. Sal Wormley gets the cyan at RG, while the tandem of JB Nelson/Olaivavega Iaone at LG do as well. In defense of Nelson/Iaone, they are filling in after Landon Tengwall hung up his cleats and decided to medically retire in late August, forcing these two reserves into a competition to fill one spot on the line. Center Hunter Nourzad, a one-time Cornell transfer, narrowly avoids the cyan, but he was put on skates numerous times by the defensive tackles of Ohio State. As for reserves, if PSU needs a third tackle, Drew Shelton is the guy

[AFTER THE JUMP: less words more video!]

Spread, pro-style, or hybrid: As usual, Penn State is a shotgun-dominant offense. Last season I charted them at 86%/14%, as PSU was going under center a decent bit on short yardage. This year I had just one charted under center snap: 

Formation	Run	PA	Pass	Total
Shotgun	18	9	39	99%
Under Center	--	--	1	1%

PSU was still skewed towards the pass through most of the game, but the severe run/pass split in this next table is partially score effects, as PSU had two all-pass drives of decent length at the end of the game when OSU was in prevent defense: 

Down	Run	Pass
1st	11	18
2nd	4	17
3rd	3	12
4th	-	1

Base set: Past iterations of the PSU offense were firmly 11 personnel base offenses, but this year's edition is base 12 in my estimation (pre-score effects drives). They have a few different two TE sets that they cycle through, sometimes with one TE in the slot, sometimes both at the line of scrimmage, and sometimes put one in the backfield. Here's with one in the slot (Theo Johnson): 

 

Basically simulating their 11 personnel base sets but recognizing that their #2-5 WRs suck and lining up a TE is a better use of time. 

Here's their look with one TE in the backfield: 

And for the hell of it, here's 11 personnel: 

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL: Like last year, PSU is more in the Basketball on Grass category than MANBALL. They ran a few gap plays early and had considerable success with them, but overall didn't put a ton on tape. Zone runs were much more common against Ohio State, especially as the game wore along. Inside zone was the main bread and butter, but the Nittany Lions had little success with it. 

Hurry it up or grind it out: Penn State does what most college teams do, get-to-the-line-and-wait-for-instructions. In 2021 I saw quite a bit of tempo from them but there was little of it last year and there wasn't much to speak of this year in the game I charted. After Purdue was our first real up-tempo team of the season last week, we're likely to slink back into normal territory this weekend. 

Quarterback Dilithium Rating (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): If you want to point to the largest difference between Drew Allar and his predecessor Sean Clifford, it would be in this component of the game. Where Clifford was an exceptional mover in the pocket, evading pressure, scrambling, and using his legs to keep the offense on schedule, Allar is an old school pocket passer. He can move a little bit, but his pocket presence is stiff and uncomfortable and his speed when he decides to run looks more like Jared Goff than Sean Clifford, we'll put it that way. 

Allar only had a few scrambles against Ohio State, with the following clip being his best one: 

They also ran a designed QB draw, which was poorly set up by the blocking, though Penn State would get a first down out of it because Allar was facemasked:

From both of these clips, you can see the stiffness and lack of fluidity that is apparent when Allar runs. He is not a great athlete and there is no slipperiness like there was with Clifford. Allar has 100 yards on 53 carries this season, which, if you exclude sacks, comes out to 42 carries for 185 yards. Count it up, that equals ~4.5 carries per game, of which I'd guess are roughly half-scrambles and half-designed QB runs. Those ~4.5 carries are going for only 4.4 yards per pop. Allar will snatch a few yards if it's given to him by the defense, but he lacks the dangerous component Clifford had. He's not going to rip off a 40+ yard run like Clifford did to Michigan last season (of note: Allar's long this season is 21 yards). I'd rate him as a 3 on the Dilithium scale. 

Dangerman: Last year I went with RB Nick Singleton as the Dangerman for this piece, but the PSU running game has not been explosive enough to justify listing either back in this spot. Instead let's focus in on the player who is more or less the entire PSU passing game: WR KeAndre Lambert-Smith. I listed in the personnel section that KLS has more catches and yards than the next two receivers on the team combined and in watching the game against Ohio State, you see the manner in which Lambert-Smith is the only receiver that Allar believes has any shot of getting open against a good secondary. He was targeted 12 times against Ohio State and 11 times against Iowa, in both cases the same amount as the next two most targeted receivers on the team combined. KLS is the only target Michigan should focus on. 

I don't have many clips of Lambert-Smith going off against Ohio State, but I do have clips of him making ordinary catches that were the most consistent positive event for the Nittany Lion offense: 

Whether it was sitting down in the zone or taking what the defense was giving when OSU was lined up in man with a big cushion, targeting KLS for 5-15 yards was their most effective passing play in this game. Another: 

Their reliance on Lambert-Smith was evident when you see the times that Allar just jacked it up for KLS and hoped he could make a play. On these plays Lambert-Smith wasn't open, but the fact they were still going that direction with the football says a lot about his importance to this offense: 

Not being a contested catch guy is why plays like the above didn't have much success. If you want more productive clips of KLS, here are a couple I have from last year of him scoring TDs against B1G opponents: 

I don't think KeAndre Lambert-Smith is an NFL superstar in the making. He's not on Marvin Harrison Jr.'s level or even Emeka Egbuka, nor Keon Coleman. He's merely a good NCAA receiver, but the reason he's the Dangerman for this piece is he is Penn State's only good NCAA receiver, be it at the wideout spot or tight end. If you can take KLS away, the Penn State passing offense is in a world of hurt and so his importance to the offense earns him this designation. 

HenneChart: Now we get to talk about Drew Allar in full, not just his mobility. I came into the season thoroughly unconvinced by the hype train after watching all of his meaningful snaps from 2022. The QB I saw as a true freshman showed some flashes here and there but seemed to lack the consistent accuracy to be a killer as a second year player the way CJ Stroud was back in 2021. That assessment seems to have come true. 

The biggest theme in discussion of Allar this season has been his low average depth of target (aDOT), which for much of the season has sat near the bottom of the B1G. In other words, we have statistical evidence for Allar mostly trying short stuff and I think this is the result of two factors, PSU's perpetually lackluster offensive line and Allar's accuracy problems down the field. Having him throw short neuters both, but it also neuters the offense, as anyone who watched the OSU-PSU game knows. I guess we should probably show the chart now: 

PSU vs. OSU	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	Screens
Drew Allar	1	19	1		8	4		1	-	7	2		68%	3

It should be noted that this is for the entire game, which includes those two score effects drives where Ohio State was dropping into soft coverage to prevent the big play, allowing Allar to rack up "catchable" graded throws that bump up the DSR. Before the score effects drives, when the game was truly competitive, his DSR was 63.6%. There was some good from Allar, but still a lot showing he's not ready for primetime. 

Last week against Maryland, Allar had his best showing of the season and the clips from that game expose the biggest story for me of Drew Allar: if you allow him time to throw, to set his feet, and let the receivers get open, he looks awesome. If you make him throw into tight windows down the field and constrict the pocket in a manner that gets his timing/footwork off, he is a wreck. 

Let's start with the good. On the shorter stuff, Allar can make some genuinely great throws on shorter routes that do require fitting balls into smaller windows: 

He's also not totally consumed by pressure, as every so often he is capable of responding and delivering off his back foot: 

The Maryland tape is filled with clips of Allar being given all day to stand in the pocket and then throw. In those circumstances, he is very good: 

Here's another: 

Against lesser teams, throwing it short to limit turnovers (only 1 INT this year!) and to open receivers while pass protection has been pretty good is enough to bolster Penn State to a top 25 SP+ offense ranking. PFF's grades of Allar are extremely good. The issue has been when pass protection breaks down, which is what the Ohio State game was. Every other game has seen PSU's pass block grade on PFF be 55 or better (most in the 60s-70s). Against Ohio State, it was 38.4. Unsurprisingly, given Allar's immobility and pocket presence, this was also his worst game. 

What stood out to me the most in watching Allar against OSU was his feet. There were snaps where protection totally broke down and he was under siege, but the much more interesting snaps were the ones where it wasn't a five-alarm fire, but a squeezing pocket, with tackles being gradually bullrushed into his lap. In those instances, plays with pressure but not a QB hit, his footwork was a mess and centrally related to his problems in the game. Look how flatfooted Allar is when he throws this ball: 

Here's another instance, where he has room to step up and set his feet but instead bunny hops forward and sails a ball: 

Throwing down the field into tight windows is just not something you feel great about Allar doing. His attempts to throw on the run didn't look great: 

It's also compounded by the fact he doesn't have playmakers down the field who can make those windows bigger. Their reluctance to ever throw the ball deep against Ohio State is because of all these reasons: 1.) will the pass pro be good enough?, 2.) will the receiver even be open/can make a contested catch?, and 3.) can Allar even get the ball there? The answer has overwhelmingly been no to at least one of those three at all times. In which case shorter throws to keep Allar in rhythm and negate any pass protection incidents has been the best formula. But if Michigan's defensive line is blowing up the pass protection like Ohio State's was, Allar could be in a world of hurt even on the shorter throws, as he was against the Bucks. And if that happens, the PSU offense is more or less out of successful plays to try. 

 

Overview

The Penn State offense is made or broken by its offensive line. We just outlined how essential pass blocking is to giving Allar the time that he desperately needs to succeed as a passer, but it is just as crucial in the run game. The story between the two phases of blocking, however, is different. Where the pass blocking this season has been largely strong besides one appalling stinker, the run blocking has been subpar in nearly every game. As a team, PFF has given them just one run block grade above 67.7, compared to three below 60. 

Which is a shame, because RBs Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen are really talented players. Singleton may not be a terribly instinctual runner, but when you give him a gap and open field, he can hit it: 

Unfortunately, those sorts of plays against OSU were few and far between. They hit a couple big ones early and then it was basically over for the rest of the game. They got rarely got any push against the OSU defensive line on the ground and this is a phenomenon not exclusive to the OSU game. A lot of runs just looked like this: 

No real push anywhere to be found. A lot of this is the players on the OL just aren't good- four starters are either cyans or narrowly avoiding the cyan and the fifth is a vastly better pass blocker than run blocker- but it's not all talent. The other half is the scheme, playcalling, and composition of the offense. Ohio State was not worried about the receivers getting open, allowing them to run blitz more and devote more resources against the run, and the lack of variety in the run game made it even easier to do.

Penn State is not a team that can load up with beef and smash your face for a first down in a short yardage situations. Unfortunately, like Ohio State and Ryan Day, James Franklin and his offensive coaching staff have an apparent long-standing deisre to beat the "soft" allegations which means they keep trying to convince themselves that maybe this will be the time they can be a team that shoves opponents around in the trenches, rather than admit who they are and build an offensive approach around their strengths. This 3rd & 2 stuffed run had me screaming in the night: 

Here's what I wrote in my spreadsheet where I chart the plays: 

They get Johnson in motion to be the crosser. Problem is it's 8v7 for OSU in the box. Hall and Williams both get nice push vs the IOL and the LBs/safeties are flying in to stuff this… TFL. Once again, PSU IS NOT A BULLYBALL TEAM. They need deception, an Allar pull, a pass in an obvious runnning situation, something to stop OSU teeing off vs runs  

The run blitzes Jim Knowles tossed at OSU had increasing success as the game went along and he was allowed to do so unencumbered because Penn State's passing game is not threatening. The QB run is not a threat anyone takes seriously and they seriously lack Dudes in the receiving corps. 

The well-established problems that PSU has on the ground are who they are. The lack of a QB run threat has put more pressure on the OL, which is not any good blocking in the run game. And even if Kaytron Allen is better than Singleton between the tackles, he's not Kenneth Walker reincarnate at making something out of nothing. Like Singleton, when you give him space it's awesome: 

Unfortunately, he seldom has space and I don't anticipate him having space against Michigan. As for pass blocking, PSU is better in this phase of the game, as noted, but they did show vulnerability against Ohio State. In particular, creative blitzes from Jim Knowles had great effect, suggesting some issues with the coaching and line calls on the line. On this play you've got LB Tommy Eichenberg blitzing and stunting with JT Tuimoloau, while the other EDGE drops and it gets home in a hurry: 

Stunts were particularly effective, causing this disaster (they eventually called intentional grounding): 

When OSU only rushed four, they weren't blowing things up regularly, but Sawyer and JTT were getting enough bullrush, and Michael Hall/Tyleik Williams were having enough success inside, to constrict the pocket and cause the footwork issues for Allar that I've previously outlined. Again, against the vast majority of teams, Allar has had the time to facilitate a pretty decent offense. Against OSU, it was a debacle. We will learn a lot about Michigan's pass-rushing this weekend because there's a pretty clear Mendoza Line of sorts here. 

Finally, we have to talk about the other receivers. My praise of KeAndre Lambert-Smith was in part because he is miles better than all the other receivers, who are a major problem. There was not much separation to speak of in this OSU-PSU matchup, especially for anyone besides KLS, despite the fact that the Bucks were banged up in the secondary. You look at plays like this next one and where are the open receivers?: 

I didn't chalk the passing trouble to Allar missing open guys. Even without the All-22 footage, it was pretty apparent that genuinely almost no one was open on a shockingly high volume of snaps. When guys did get open, there were too many drops than you can stomach in a game against an elite defense like OSU: 

That's WR Liam Clifford on that one, but both RBs dropped at least one screen. The TEs, most notably (given the talent) Theo Johnson were nothing special at all. Past iterations of the PSU offense gave you a lot to be worried about. This year's squad does not offer the same punch and that is a limiting factor for the Penn State offense. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

This is going to be a test for Michigan and a moment to see what the Wolverine defense is made of. We watched an elite defense that Michigan ranks higher in SP+ than shut down the PSU offense only a few weeks back. An Indiana defense that is no one's idea of a great unit held PSU to under 350 yards and 4.6 YPP just two weeks ago. Yes the Nittanys looked much sharper against Maryland, but the Terrapin defense was lit up by Illinois/Northwestern in the preceding two weeks. Looking at what PSU did (and didn't do) against OSU is more instructive for this Michigan game and if Michigan wants to be a national title contender, they should have success against the PSU offense. 

Especially because it feels like Michigan is built to beat the PSU offense. If we assume that PSU's run offense is plainly subpar (as it has been against a wide swath of opponents), the passing game is the bigger beast. By having an NFL-caliber corner to deal with PSU's one lone WR threat (Lambert-Smith) and an ostensibly monstrous defensive interior that can abuse the weak Penn State IOL, Michigan should be well-positioned to go strength-on-strength and take away the elements that PSU's offense needs to function. If Michigan is having success in those areas, only a significant, out-of-character leap by Allar can meaningful change the equation. Which could happen, but I wouldn't bank on it.