SB Nation thinks Penn State is the next Clemson
They’ve proven that they can beat a weak division with a strong team, which was last year. They’ll struggle mightily without those major built in advantages they enjoyed last year, and especially with a depleted offense. Looking forward to it.
The BigTen East is a weak division - it was last year? Both Sagarin's computer ranking and Massey's computer ranking had the BigTen East as the 3rd best division in all of college football last year.
If we finished 4th in a weak division then we have a lot more work to do than I think we do to catchup.
SB Nation is getting a bit ahead of themselves. I'm still not convinced of McSorley. If I had to wager money on it I'd say that Trevor Lawrence is better than McSorley right now and he probably won't even start for Clemson.
Trevor Lawrence will be the starter at some point this year. The kid is the real deal.
Franklin's career minus Moorhead is pretty mediocre. Credit to him for making a great hire but I'm not so sure he can continue to succeed now that Moorhead is gone.
Yeah, I'm not sure he made the right hire, and it will be interesting to see how Rahne does. He was the passing game coordinator during the Hackenberg era which didn't go so well. I'm sure he learned a lot from Moorhead but we'll see if it was enough to do it on his own.
I would have gone out and replicated the Moorhead model and hired a proven OC at a lower level.
I was wondering recently, how long does it usually take for a subpar replacement to really show and impact a team? Like the 2011 Michigan offense was still decent because it was basically the RR players and had guys like Lewan and Denard, it wasn't until 2012 that it started to show and 2013 when it went off a cliff.
Even if the replacement isn't Moorehead, it won't be an immediate regression. However, they lost Shoop and promoted a LB coach who has kept them at the same level for the next 2 years.
Bringing McSorely back will prevent the offense from falling too far. But still, they lost pretty much every skill player on offense plus their rock star OC. Wouldn't surprise me for PSU's offense to fall into the 30s or 40s.
Considering our offense was ranked 105th last season, I would gladly "settle" for "30s or 40s".
That's a good question and it obviously depends on the personnel returning and how much of the "old" system is kept in place. As a counter to your example of Michigan keeping the train rolling for the most part from 2011 to 2012. look what happened from 2007 to 2008 when few players returned and the system was completely overhauled with the wrong guys in place. It fell further down a cliff that one could have imagined possible.
In the case of PSU, I think they have pretty good personnel returning.
They return the most important player: the QB.
They replace a really good RB with...another RB perhaps almost as good.
Stringer Bell is wrong that they lose all their skill position players. They return their #2 and #3 WRs from 2017 (Johnson and Thompkins, respectively).
They do lose Gesicki which might prove to the toughest guy to replace.
But most importantly, they finally have some experience on the OL and that position group is the second most important for an offense and it's likely to be the best in three years.
I don't think they'll fall far, they certainly have a lot of talent left, and Rahne was a least around the pest two years so he's not going to do anything too drastic or risky.
I did say "almost". And I think most would agree that Barkley, Gesicki, and Hamilton were their 3 best skill players. It's unlikely they'll replace those 3 players without missing much of a beat.
Well, technically you said "pretty much" but point taken, yes.
And yes, they lost their top 3 skill players but they return their next 3 (Johnson, Thompkins and Sanders) and those guys will step into the shoes of the departed pretty well. And in the case of the WRs, one could easily be better than Hamilton was last year.
They lost guys but the ones that remain will mostly improve over the course of a year as well.
And I do agree that the loss of Gesicki may be the biggest loss because thats probably the biggest dropoff from the departed to his replacement.
I think they'll be worse as a unit, possibly a lot worse, but it'll be almost solely the result of an OC downgrade. I don't think their personnel will be much worse on offense overall, and factoring in OL, could be better.
Miles Sanders is not almost as good Barkley. PSU’s line still blows. They will feel the loss of Hamilton and Gesicki.
Miles Sanders was the #1 RB in his class and is highly talented. Barkley was incredible but Sanders may very well be almost as good. It's absurd to even say that we don't have any reason to think he's not almost as good.
To assume the OL still blows is also curious considering all we know is they returned a lot pieces and are now actually somewhat experienced.
They lost by far their most important pieces and you can't just replace them. Their oline is still shaky and it's not like they were consistently good on offense. They relied on explosive plays from Barkley and jump balls to Gilseki. Hamilton forced teams to stay honest. Special teams is important for them too. I'm not saying they aren't good, but not anything like Clemson.
The 2011 offense was still RR's offense - it was a full on spread to run handled by DRob. Hoke started slowly morphing it into a more traditional pro-style in 2012, which is when everything started to go off the rails for him. I wouldn't make the same OC comparisons for another team as far as any regression is concerned. It more depends on the scheme a new OC wants to run, and the players he has for that scheme.
If Rahne keeps Moorehead's scheme and play calling, he'll do okay. If he tries to change it to something else altogether, he better hope he has the players for it...
That's a lame take? I mean without Don Brown, what is Michigan? What is coach Harbaugh?
(fyi, OSU fan here)
It isn't fair to define Coach Harbaugh based on last year's 8-5 record. He has the accolades and success to show that he is a good coach. Without Don Brown there was DJ Durkin was very solid, not to mention the plethora of other coaches who have played for him.
Without Don Brown, Harbaugh built a downtrodden Stanford into a powerhouse and took the perennially mediocre 49ers to the Super Bowl.
Don Brown is fantastic but Harbaugh has accomplished a lot in his career no matter who his assistants are. The same can't be said for Franklin.
Clemson has had some ridiculous recruiting classes. PSU has recruited well, but not at Clemson's level. If Urban and OSU don't choke in 2016 @ PSU, this is likely not a conversation.
Clemson had a great class this past year and they've otherwise been only ok, pulling in classes just outside or at the bottom of the top ten. I mean, it was obviously good enough, but we're not talking Bama or OSU here. Teams like LSU have recruited a lot better with far less to show for it.
That's actually not true about Clemson's recruiting. They won the national title in 2017 with these four classes:
2016: 11th
2015: 9th
2014: 16th
2013: 15th
None of those classes remotely qualify as ridiculous, even on their own.
It wasn't until their 2018 class which has five 5-stars that they really broke through with a "ridiculous" class and that class hasn't even played a down.
Clemson climbed to the top with very modest recruiting.
I did an Nth best analysis before last year and Michigan had even a little more talent on its roster last year than Clemson did the year they won the NC. I'd show you my plots, but I can't figure out how to do it on the new site.
Exactly.
Clemson has NOT been recruiting at an OSU or Bama level at all until just now. They've won based on scheme and coaching. Which is why the article says that Clemson is the blueprint for most teams to follow. It's painfully obvious that it's possible for teams not historically in the top 5 every year to win at the highest level, ala Clemson.
This is when people need to look deeper than surface level. Clemson has been a stable program and only taken pretty small classes. Their average recruit rating has vastly outpaced their overall placement due to small classes.
theyve also had some pretty impactful juco transfers from guys who were former five star or top 100 types but don’t get counted that way in recruiting rankings.
Not really.
From 2013-2016 Clemson's classes were usually in the mid 20s for total number, two years with 1 5* each, 1 year with 3 5*s, and the rest all 4* and 3* recruits. Their total numbers were very comparable to the teams around them as well.
It's not like they were pulling in all 5* and a few 4* players or anything.
For instance, in 2013 our class was ranked 4th nationally, with 1 5*, 17 4*, and 8 3* players. Clemson that year was ranked 15th nationally with 1 5*, 10 4*, and 11 3* players. And yet Clemson continued to put up 10-12 win seasons every year after this while...well, we obviously know what happened around here.
Clemson has seriously overachieved and gotten the most possible out of the guys they've brought in.
It's hilarious when people say that others need to look deeper than surface level...and then proceed so spout untrue assumptions without looking deeper.
Clemsons classes by average recruit rank in the years that gave them a national title:
2016: 9th highest average rank (move ahead of Texas and Michigan when only considering average rank). They took 8 3 stars to only 1 5 star that year.
2015: Moves DOWN to 12th from 9th. This was a big class of 26 in which they took a whopping 14 3 stars or below. So not at all consistent with your claim of high average, small class.
2014: Move up one spot to 15th from 16th (they move ahead of 4 with more points but behind 3 with fewer points - interestingly, they had a lower average ranking than Michigan's tiny 16 man class that included Peppers).
2013: This class stays right at 15th (Texas moves ahead and Miami moves behind on average class size).
Soooo, no. Your assertion that "their average recruit rating has vastly outpaced their overall placement due to small classes" is 100% incorrect.
They may have had a handful of good Juco transfers and that's a talent bump that schools like Michigan won't get (but other will).
Doesn't change the fact that they haven't been close to as talented top to bottom as OSU, Bama and others.
They've followed a simple, brilliant formula (and were lucky enough that Deshaun Watson was and is a generational talent at the most important position on the field):
1) Get a great QB and use a smart offensive system to leverage his arm and legs so as to get by without elite OLs.
2) Get elite DLs because that's the most important position on defense and leverage their impact.
Program and system continuity definitely helps too. PSU isn't at the same level of talent at QB and DL but they've had some pretty good ones and the thing Franklin did do correctly the last two years, which made a huge difference was hiring a good coach to run a smart offense.
A lot of folks on this board said Franklin couldn't coach.
Shows what this board knows.
He hasn't proven otherwise. He has so far proven to be a good recruiter and found a good OC for 1 year.
Was that the year they won the B1G title or the year they went 11-2 including a win in the Fiesta Bowl?
Fiesta bowl, you know, the year they had a better offense because of Moorhead. Big ten title year was when we beat them 49-10 and they lost to Pitt got lucky vs. Urban and beat a crappy MSU team, but still didn't make the playoffs because no one thought they were as good as their record.
Wake me up when they make the playoffs. Just like us.
I think Joe Moorhead is an awesome coach. I'm not at all sold on Field Goal Franklin yet
You undersell how important a skill hiring the right people is. Franklin chose Moorhead out of all possible options. He's shown at every level he has the skill to hire the right people for the right job.
Moorhead’s wife has to be super-hot........
Also - What Harbaugh did at Stanford was better than what Franklin did at Vandy. And he did it without a sexual assault coverup (allegedly).
No Saquon & No Morehead?
I'll take the under on that bet
And hemorrhoid cream is the next toothpaste.
They're doing well, sure. But "next Clemson" is a bit of a stretch, even by the criteria they've provided.
1. They tout Clemson's improved recruiting (ironically, prior to this past year they only ever grazed the top ten, but they consistently hung out in the 9-13 range for most of Swinney's tenure) but PSU's listed recruiting rankings are not as good. No question they're getting some good recruits, but not quite up to Clemson's level just yet.
2. Clemson's strength is in its staff, and they recognize this, and use Moorhead as a correlation. But Moorhead is gone and there's no equivalent to Venables for the defense that I'm aware of. I'm not the PSU-dogger that many are, but I think PSU has at best the third-best staff in the division, and maybe not even that depending upon what you think of MSU's crew.
3. Fairness: this article does contrast the conference schedule, specifically the division. Clemson doesn't have the brutal competition PSU (or Michigan or Michigan State or OSU) have in the ACC. Indeed, on their run only Florida State has been a serious threat, and they've been inconsistent since Jameis Winston left. A scheduled filled with teams like Pitt and NC State and North Carolina is just not as difficult as facing the B1G East and one of Wisconsin or Iowa every year. Not even close.
In short: The "next Clemson" has to have both the great staff and great talent pipeline (iffy on both counts for PSU) and has to have a clear path to the playoff every year. Even if PSU is growing as good as the article suggests, the clear path is just not there. The B1G East is far and away the toughest division in football, there's no way any of its teams will dominate it long-term. Not PSU, not even us, not even OSU.
Give one of our teams Clemson's schedule and we'd have multiple playoff appearances in a five-year stretch.
Nobody deserves 20 million points.
This board is a meritocracy, Jan. Deal with it.
Username and avatar do NOT check out...
Meritocracy. LOL. No one can have merited 20 million points. His comments are not THAT good.
Maybe.
I feel like this is viewing Clemson's team as "good" not "great" which only gets to the playoff due to a weak conference. But are we all forgetting Clemson's absolutely thrashing of Ohio St in 2016. I mean 31-0 is crazy. No one beats Urban Meyer 31-0 without having an insanely good team. So it's not like Clemson is skating by on a weak conference every year.
Outside of OSU, I think that if you took MSU, UM, or PSU (for now) and swapped them out with Clemson in the ACC, they certainly make one playoff berth, but they would undoubtedly struggle to dominate every year like Clemson has. Whereas you could probably put Clemson in the B1G East and they'd take OSU's place as the team to beat just about every single every year.
Iowa beat Ohio State 55-24 (31 point margin) last year and were 8-5. Is that an insanely good team?
Npe. That's called a fluke.
Clemson on the other hand has only won less than 11 games twice in the past 7 seasons.
I think this is an incredibly fair view. No doubt that PSU has had back to back stellar seasons, but it seems like the two main variables that the article looked at for PSU (recruiting and coaching talent) are not quite at Clemson's level. Not to say that they can't break through.
Franklin has a step on Harbaugh, but I think this season will give us clear trajectories for both programs.
James Franklin will crash and burn this year and it will be glorious to watch
See though, Dabo still has his ace assistant in Venables. Franklin lost Moorhead. I don't think Franklin is a good enough coach to make Penn State elite without a truly elite coordinator
Outside of Saban and Meyer, is ANY coach actually capable of making their team elite without elite coordinators?
I'm not sure there are any other coaches in the country who could pull this off.
Man, People are salty about Franklin on this board. I don't really like him either but he did do a great job at Vanderbilt as well. There's a reason he's been successful.
His great job at Vanderbilt is winning 24 games in 3 years. That's good, yes, but it's not powerhouse status.
His great job at Penn State has been a trip to the Big Ten Championship game that was mostly predicated on high-variance arm punts to very tall receivers (who are gone) followed by last year, which was built around RPOs designed by a great OC (who is gone) around a top-5 NFL draft pick RB (who is gone).
Nobody thinks PSU is suddenly going to go 3-9 this year, but I think a lot of people here would be less surprised if they went 8-4 than if they went 10-2.