Penn State’s Sean Clifford is good, has been good, is only scratching the surface

Penn State Football quarterback Sean Clifford led the Nittany Lions to a 28-20 victory over Auburn in the annual white out last Saturday, playing arguably his best game of his career in the blue and white 

Penn State Football is off to an impressive 3-0 start this season, beating two ranked teams in Wisconsin and Auburn which has the Nittany Lions garnering national attention.

James Franklin‘s squad is up to No. 6 in the latest AP poll, while ESPN has written extensively this week how this team is good enough to carry the Big Ten’s water this season, and be the represent the conference in the College Football Playoff.

These are giant expectations for a team that many were not sure what to think of just three weeks ago, coming into this season. Especially  after last year’s disappointing 4-5 campaign.

One thing many did expect though, is this team will go as quarterback Sean Clifford goes, and so far, so good for both quarterback and team.

Clifford faced a ton of criticism last season for his play, and undoubtedly heard all the noise from the media and fans alike this offseason about Penn State Football picking up a quarterback in the transfer portal, and how the Nittany Lions could not win with him at the helm.

To this point, he has silenced the critics fresh off arguably the best game of his career in the blue and white, completing 28 of 32 passes for 280 yards and two touchdowns in the win over Auburn.

On the outside looking in, this game is a outlier, a surprise to the casual fan who knows Clifford as a game manager with turnover issues, but the reality may be Clifford is more so the quarterback we saw dicing up the Auburn defense Saturday night, then he is the quarterback we saw benched after a second first half turnover in Lincoln, Nebraska last season.

After being benched in the Nebraska game, he was inserted late in the game against Iowa and was back to being the starter, where the Nittany Lions would win the last four games of the season, the beginning of their now seven game winning streak.

Over that span, Clifford is completing 68% of his passes, throwing for 1,570 yards, 9 touchdowns and only two interceptions while rushing for another three scores during that span.

Clifford won’t be winning any Heisman trophies with those numbers, but he is far from the game manager label we are quick to throw on him, and is certainly far from the turnover prone quarterback we saw early in 2020.

A glance at his overall body of work through 23 collegiate starts to this point shows quite the contrary actually, it more so suggests that the ugly 2020 start was the outlier, and Clifford is more the quarterback we saw Saturday. That potentially, all he needed was some normalcy, and some Mike Yurcich creativity to take that next step.

Over 23 starts Clifford has thrown for 5,294 yards and 43 touchdowns to 17 interceptions. When you factor in his legs, he has amassed 6,118 yards and 52 scores for Penn State Football. His career completion percentage as a starter is 63.8. He has attempted 644 passes, meaning he has thrown an interception on only 2.6% of his passes during his career.

Let’s compare that to last years first overall pick, Trevor Lawrence who was intercepted on 1.7% of his passes during his career at Clemson. Doesn’t seem so bad now, right? Even more so, if you remove those four five bad games to start 2020, he has only thrown 11 interceptions. Penn State Football is proving thus far last year was an outlier in the midst of a pandemic, why doesn’t Clifford get to crinkle up last year and throw it in the trash?

Clifford was known as a game manager during that 2019 season and the hire of Kirk Ciarrocca last offseason was supposed to help take Clifford to the next level. However, it seemed to have the adverse effect, further enforced by head coach James Franklin, who is sometimes loyal to a fault, dropping Kirk for new offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich, who we have come to know has long been the apple of Franklin’s eye.

This season under Yurcich, Clifford is completing 71.3% of his passes, almost 10% higher then his career average. His footwork was stellar Saturday night, and he is now taking the next step in his evolution as a quarterback, making plays on the run. Too many times in the past he would drop his eyes and tuck it and run, or throw the ball away. Multiple times the other night we saw him make accurate strikes on the run while escaping the pocket, one for a touchdown to Jahan Dotson down on the goal line in the first quarter.

It has been what Yurcich has been known for, to be a quarterback whisperer, due in large part to his ability to get his signal caller easy throws, easy reads, and get the ball to his playmakers in space. However, his creativity was on full display against the Tigers, none more so then on the play below.

As you see in the tweet above, following a first down, Yurcich goes full up tempo, not allowing Auburn to substitute. Yurcich saw on film that Auburn likes to play man coverage in these situations because it is easiest to relay to all eleven defenders when the opponent is going as fast as Penn State Football was here.

He lines up Brenton Strange at left tackle, and kicks right tackle Caedan Wallace out to where a slot wide receiver would be, making Strange eligible because he is lined up on the ball. Before Auburn can realize what is going on, Strange breaks lose wide open, Clifford puts about a six yard pass on him and he rumbles for 37 yards down inside the five yard line, eventually setting up a Noah Cain touchdown run to put them up 28-20 for good.

That type of creativity allows Clifford to make the easiest of passes and get credited with 37 passing yards. Making life easy on Clifford will make life easier on the Nittany Lions as the season trudges on.

This version of Sean Clifford is more then that of a game manager, it is more then that of a quarterback who just doesn’t screw it up. It is goof enough to bring Penn State Football to new heights they have yet to reach, The College Football Playoff.