I’m not sure that we will remember much from this 2023 Penn State football season. I’m not sure there’s much to remember.
But that’s the frustration with a 10-3 record, no real signature win and maybe no real signature moment or play. The 2023 season very much happened but won’t leave a lasting impression.
In a lot of ways, 2023 for Penn State was a frustratingly complicated year that put the program no closer but no further away from achieving its goal. And what the goal is or was feels no more clear than where we were at the start of this season.
Penn State finished this year with double-digit wins. Again. And it’s hard to complain as a fan in a macro-perspective about a second straight 10-win-plus season in college football where you can’t take things for granted, especially with this season including a first year starting quarterback at the helm.
But on the flip side, again, Penn State did not beat Ohio State – something it hasn’t done since 2016 – and it did not beat Michigan – the final eliminator of any lingering hope at the College Football Playoff’s four-team bracket.
Because of that, fans have to live with the fact Penn State never made the four-team playoff. Then again, Penn State never once made it to the BCS Title game. Then again, Penn State, moreover, fans have never pumped more money into this program.
Right now, the state of Penn State football is complicated. And 2023 was a not good, not bad, confusing, a little bit repetitive, somewhat grumpy year that exemplified all convoluted anguish with no real payout, leaving a bitter reward of no guaranteed value until at least August 2024.
I’ve been asking myself a lot lately if we were wrong about this year. I predicted Penn State to go 11-1. So from that standpoint, yes, I was wrong. I predicted them to make the playoffs. Also, wrong on that as well. But I don’t know if those predictions were based more on wishful thinking than anything else.
If anything, those promises were an overpromise made to myself when 10-2, which is what Penn State did finish in the regular season, was probably more reality-based with a new starting quarterback, a questionable wide receiver room and yet a strong, steady defense.
But in other ways, maybe we were wrong about the fact that this season had to be The Year – or anything close to it. The road to the playoff will only get easier when it expands. But it also leaves the uncertainty of whether or not in an expanded playoff and expanded Big Ten, Penn State can make said 12-team tournament and then also march its way through the bracket.
2023 provided no clarity toward any of those future answers and in some ways clouded it.
Right now, it feels like a lot of fans are questioning what is next for Penn State if they couldn’t take a step forward but didn’t take a step backward this year.
Was the Peach Bowl a glimpse of what’s to come or was the Peach Bowl, particularly with the offense, a glimpse of where Penn State was coming from?
Considering the facts of the entire season, Penn State’s offense was not as good as the wishful preseason optimism led us to believe. Much of that optimism was tethered around two central figures in offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich and sophomore five-star quarterback Drew Allar.
Statistically speaking, there was reason early on in the season to believe it was there. Penn State’s offense was top 15 nationally in scoring, dropping more than 35 points six times. Penn State finished fourth nationally in red zone conversion rate at 95.3 percent. Even the running game, which wasn’t as splashy or eye-catching as it was in 2022, finished tops in the Big Ten, averaging 184 yards per game. Marks of a good offense right?
No, the coordinator was fired by James Franklin after the 15-point performance against the Wolverines where the quarterback threw for a mere 70 yards.
By the end of the year, Yurcich’s offense finished 97th in plays of 20 or more yards and 112th in plays of 30 or more yards. On third down, the Nittany Lions were a middling 54th when it comes to conversion rate. Those numbers all allude that there was no spark to the offense and there was no consistency.
A lot of that came from the fact Yurcich failed to unlock Allar’s potential. Whether it be scheming or trust in the young quarterback, Yurcich, and by proxy Franklin, couldn’t get the quarterback consistently in rhythm or at very least in a position to succeed in moments when it mattered most – a game in Columbus and a game against Michigan.
Of course, the struggles are also reflected in the fact Penn State’s wide receiving room wasn’t the top touchdown catching bunch on the team. That responsibility fell to the tight ends. For most of the season, aside from the first drive of the season when Allar found KeAndre Lambert-Smith and then in a crucial moment late against Indiana, the wide receiver room disappeared. And when the running game worked to relieve the pressure off of Allar’s shoulders, it too evaporated by way of play-calling decisions and at times performance in itself. Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton, while having productive years, didn’t provide the same level of consistent output we saw in their freshman seasons.
For as much as the offense didn’t play out the way we thought it would, the defense did however. It played well virtually every game, it created turnovers and it saw Manny Diaz return to a head coaching job, this time at Duke. That all went as expected and if anything was the only thing that went as expected.
But by far – emphasis by far – the most frustrating aspect of Penn State’s season was its offense, and that frustration was amplified by a defense so good that it shut out teams three times this year – something Penn State hadn’t done in more than 30 years. It was not a playoff-caliber defense, it was a national championship-caliber defense.
In my millennial lifetime, it was the best defense to ever play in Happy Valley and it painfully went to waste due to a meandering offense. It was frustrating because it was more than good enough to achieve what many had hoped – but also was good enough to achieve what we probably should have thought, at least 10 wins.
That brings us to the anxiousness and confusion of the future. Diaz, a clear mastermind, is gone. Now in his place is former Indiana head coach Tom Allen. By all accounts, Allen’s schemes – and ability to singularly focus on them now – will play well with Penn State’s returning defense, spearheaded by Abdul Carter and Kobe King.
And even if there were concerns at secondary from the Peach Bowl and the nearly 400 yards that Ole Miss put up against it, there’s time to course correct and fix them before next year.
What will have to be fixed in order to find success in 2024 is the offense and that will be new offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki’s job. Those stats where Penn State lacked this year, Kansas ranked toward the top in many of those categories. He helped make you think about the Jayhawks’ football program instead of just its basketball program for the first time in quite a while under Lance Leipold and now will be tasked of helping Franklin reach new heights.
Those heights are ones that Franklin has to hit in order to keep his job. But by when remains the question. Franklin has a $56 million buy-out after 2024 that goes down to $40 million in 2025. For an irrational fan base with relatively tight pockets and a rational fanbase with fear of uncertainty of life after Franklin, it may be a hard decision to make when you look at the results compared to the rest of the country.
There is also no guarantee that his would-be replacement would be any better.
And that’s part of what makes 2023 so pestering to digest. It wasn’t a good year but it wasn’t a bad year. Penn State still won 10 games. It just didn’t achieve what you or I wanted it to achieve. It perfectly encapsulated the complicated line of both deprived and ungrateful this fandom comes with.
The solution for Penn State football, or actually Franklin, is clear, though. Patience is running thin around these parts – even for the most optimistic. That can be seen – or rather heard – when fans jeered him during his walk back down the tunnel after the loss to Michigan. To borrow a phrase from your favorite Penn State uncle though, winning cures all.
And in some ways, college football’s playoff era is working against him. This is Penn State, where since 1960, there have been 2 national titles. But since 1987, there have been 0. However, from 1987 to 2011, Penn State fans were fine with trading a few mediocre years for fewer above average years.
In a lot of ways, Franklin has delivered above average years more often than not. Penn State has made five trips to New Year’s Six bowls since he took over. He’s won more than 10 games each of those five times and there’s still nostalgia all over for 2016.
Yet in his 10 years, there have been no playoff trips, no national titles, no Heismans, no college football landscape shifting moments.
In this era, Franklin has been under the pressure to deliver a national title since yesterday. In part that’s because he’s had to ask for more due to Penn State’s former stagnant place in the college football arms race that the program has seemingly caught up in, signified by larger contracts for assistants and upgraded facilities left and right.
And in some ways Franklin has done this to himself with “elite” speeches and repeated losses to the programs in the way of taking that next step.
He has yet to deliver at least an 11-1 season but may not have to start to erase some of the anger of fans with the playoff expanding in 2024.
But if he misses those playoffs, oh boy, will those jeers get even louder. The patience will only get thinner. So that, too, adds to the complication that essentially nothing happened toward Penn State’s future outcome and future goals in 2023 that you can see now. Yet changes were made to hopefully – for the optimists out there – make sure Penn State does hit its goals in 2024 and beyond.
It’s difficult to see the whole picture right now when the picture has taken 10 years and counting to develop but still appears to be developing with some quality.
What will that picture look like once it’s done developing? What does success look like in Happy Valley? What will make fans happy? This year, it probably would have been a trip to the playoff but maybe that was optimistic thinking. Maybe that was too hopeful. Or maybe it wasn’t.
Next year, it rationally seems like making the playoffs will quiet down and calm many of those concerns – because for the most part, Penn State has been a top 12 program in the country, maybe not a top four program in the country, under Franklin.
But the problem is, you have to wait. And there’s nothing that Penn Staters hate more to do than wait. I mean how many times have you skipped out on Creamery Ice Cream because of a long line?
2023 was a frustrating season right now. There was no moment. There was no play. There was no thought you can think back on and really say “remember how that changed the course of the season for the better.”
Right now Penn State is no better. No worse. Not much to take away this year.
That might be what we remember the most.
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