Penn State Football made a shocking move earlier this month when they announced a coaching change of offensive coordinators after hiring Kirk Ciarroca just one year ago, replacing him with Mike Yurcich.
James Franklin and Penn State Football have attacked the offseason with an aggressive ad urgent mindset with transfer players, but also made a big change on the staff as well.
Former Texas offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich is in at Penn State football, while Ciarrocca who was hired 12 months ago, is out.
The move comes as a surprise because Franklin worked quietly to make this happen, although as we learned from Franklin himself at last week’s press conference, Yurcich is the white whale he has been chasing for a few years now.
The head coach mentioned that he has been in contact with Yurcich over the years during his stops at Ohio State and Texas after leaving Oklahoma State, his first power five job.
Penn State’s offense under Ciarrocca last season was methodical and grinded out drives, eating clock.
It seems Franklin was not a fan, and felt the offense needed a “philosophical” change.
"“It’s going to be back to who we were the previous three or four years,” Franklin told reporters last week. “It’s going to be spread, it’s going to be tempo, there’s going to be an emphasis on explosive plays. Obviously we’re still working through all those types of things, but me and Mike have been talking for a long time, and we’re on the same page in what we want to do and how we want to do it. And Mike has lived in that world.”"
Based off Franklin’s comments, it is probably fair to assume he wanted Yurcich once former offensive coordinator Joe Moorehead left for the head coaching job at Mississippi State.
Penn State football promoted Ricky Rahne to that position, and after he left for the head job at Old Dominion, they hired Ciarrocca last offseason. If Yurcich would have come to Happy Valley back in 2018, neither of those guys probably ever get the job with the Nittany Lions.
Yurcich is an Ohio native but has done the tour of small Pennsylvania schools, coaching at Saint Francis, Edinboro, and Shippensburg. He also quarterbacked at California University of Pennsylvania during his college days.
Needless to say, Yurcich’s hiring embodies Franklin’s goal to “dominate the state,” in recruiting, which the Nittany Lions have struggled to do in recent cycles.
Yurcich was hired as the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State after head coach Mike Gundy found him doing an online search for offensive minds within football. The hire certainly surprised many as Yurcich was relatively an unknown, however he stuck with the Cowboys for six years.
He then left to go work with Ryan Day and the Buckeyes, where he served as the passing game coordinator for Ohio State in 2019 before taking the offensive coordinator job at Texas in 2020. After the season, head coach Tom Herman was let go, and thus Yurcich was available and Franklin did not hesitate to pounce and get his guy.
With Yurcich now in the fold for Penn State football, lets take a look inside the numbers on his career and his stops along the way and how it might effect what the Nittany Lions offense might look like next fall:
Oklahoma State – Offensive Coordinator/QB Coach (2013-2018)
In Yurcich’s six season with Oklahoma State, the Cowboys averaged 38.7 points per game, and 479 yards per game.
Granted, the Big 12 conference is known for it’s lack of defense at times, and routinely plays high scoring offensive shootouts, however, those numbers are stellar. Year in and year out, the Cowboys had one of the best offenses in college football under Yurcich.
Some of Oklahoma State’s best years came with Mason Rudolph at the helm, where he started for three seasons at quarterback, from 2015-2017.
Rudolph is a true pocket passer, standing at six-foot-five and 235 pounds, and for Penn State football fans, current quarterback Sean Clifford does draw resemblance of him. Rudolph was not considered an elite talent, as he was eventually chosen in the third-round of the 2018 NFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers.
For his career, Rudolph passed for over 13,000 yards and 92 touchdowns to only 26 interceptions at Oklahoma State.
Rudolph’s 26 interceptions is astounding when you consider he attempted 1,447 passes, meaning he was picked off on only 1.7% of his passes. By comparison, Clifford has been intercepted 16 times on 577 attempts, 2.7% of his passes.
Last week, Franklin talked about an offense that gets more people involved and spreads the ball around, and how that is a major plus for the program
Yurcich was a master of spreading the ball around during his time at Oklahoma State.
The Cowboys averaged over five players per year with 20 or more receptions for the season. By comparison, Penn State Football averaged 3.7 players per year with 20+ receptions, and the last two years, it was merely three.
That spread, air raid attack Yurcich brings to Happy Valley should mean big things for the Lions receiving core, especially guys like Lambert-Smith and Sullivan-Brown who were more third and fourth options last year.
More passes and more options built with a lot of pre snap motion should have whoever is behind center for Penn State Football spreading the ball around.
Oklahoma State also featured a star wide receiver in James Washington who caught 226 passes for 4,472 yards and 39 touchdown on Yurcich’s watch. Washington was another player who was not an elite talent, listed at five-foot-eleven and just over 200 pounds, you could draw comparisons to Jahan Dotson for Penn State football.
Dotson is also listed at five-foot-eleven, just under 200 pounds. Dotson broke out last year with a monster season leading the Big Ten in receiving in 2020. It will be interesting to see what the new look offense could do for Dotson and how it will maximize his skill set.
Ohio State – Passing Game Coordinator/QB Coach (2019)
Passing game coordinator is the new term and position we are going to hear about both in college football and the NFL, especially after Joe Brady assumed that position for the LSU Tigers before leading them to a national championship in 2019 and the Carolina Panthers’ offensive coordinator job immediately after.
At Ohio State, Yurcich had soon-to-be top-10 pick Justin Fields at quarterback. Together, the Buckeyes’ aerial attack led the Big Ten with 47 points per game and 530 yards per game.
Fields was a Heisman contender in 2019, passing for 3,273 yards and 41 touchdowns to only three interceptions. Granted, Fields is a special talent, but Ohio State’s offensive design seemed to always have someone open.
Keeping up with the trend from his time at Oklahoma State, the Buckeyes had six players catch 20 plus passes last season. Even running back JK Dobbins caught 23 passes in 2019, once again showing how Yurcich is willing to spread the ball around in his offense. By comparison, Penn State running back Keyvone Lee had 12 receptions last year.
Granted, Ohio State has a gaggle of five star prospects for Fields to fling the ball around to, but he threw an interception on 0.84% of his passes in 2019. That is a trend under Yurcich that cannot be ignored.
Yurcich puts his quarterbacks in good positions to succeed, and gets the ball out of their hands, attacking space with numbers and hoping to allow playmakers to make plays with the ball in their hands.
Fields made all the throws with the Buckeyes, but completed 67% of his passes, showing the efficiency in which Ohio State passed the ball. Meanwhile, Penn State Football quarterback Sean Clifford has a completed passes at a 60% clip over the last two seasons.
The excitement of Yurcich’s ability to have five receivers involved in this offense catching passes should intrigue Penn State Football fans.
Texas – Offensive Coordinator/Quarterbacks Coach (2020)
When Yurcich was named offensive coordinator of the Texas Longhorns, a lot of people connected to the program wondered how much of their game plan was to have Yurcich replace head coach Tom Herman.
The Longhorns averaged 41.3 points per game to go along with 475 yards per game under Yurcich’s tutelage, both good for second in the Big 12 to the Oklahoma Sooners.
Yurcich was gifted quarterback Sam Ehlinger last season, who was in his fourth season under center for Texas. Ehlinger is similar to Clifford, in that they are both six-foot-three and are limited with their ability to make all the throws.
A lot of Texas’ offense was predicated on getting the ball out of Ehlinger’s hand and to their playmakers. The Longhorns had four receivers catch 20 plus passes, as the ball was evenly distributed among wideouts.
Ehlinger did run for fewer than half of the yards he did in 2019, only 377, which is more of an indicator that Yurcich’s offense is about the quarterback making plays from the pocket with his arm than scrambling for yards with his legs.
Ehlinger did throw a touchdown on 8% of his passes under Yurcich, which is up from 7% in 2019 and way up from 5.8% in 2018.
Yurcich seems to have a knack for making quarterbacks more efficient and maximizing their abilities. For comparison, Clifford threw a touchdown pass on 6.3% of his passing attempts in 2020.
The five interceptions Ehlinger threw last season tied for the lowest in his career in a season, down five picks from the year before. If Yurcich can get a quarterback like Ehlinger to cut down on his turnovers and make the most of his passing abilities, their is no reason he can’t with Clifford.
Simplifying reads and spreading the defense out is key to making life easier on his quarterbacks.
Penn State Football certainly hopes that Yurcich helps its quarterbacks get back to doing exactly that in 2021.