Penn State Football: position grades for the offensive line

Grading the performance of the Penn State Football offensive line for the 2021 regular season

How many times have you heard someone mutter the following statement heading into a Penn State Football season – “Hey, the offensive line could be a strength of the team this year.“.

It’s happened for so many seasons in a row that the statement is now officially a meme for Penn State Football fans.

I’m sure some beat writer or some local sportscaster or some blogger mentioned it going into this season as well.

And I believe after the Nittany Lions put up 80 total rushing yards in their Week 4 win over Villanova (38-17), that everyone realized this was going to be a long, long season in terms of watching the offensive line continue to struggle game after game.

Particularly in getting the run going.

Prior to the Nittany Lions’ trip to Madison for their opener against Wisconsin, the projected starting offensive line was the following:

2021 Projected OL

RT – Caedan Wallace
2019 Recruiting class – 3rd overall guard – 81st overall recruit – .9627 composite

RG – Sal Wormley
2018 Recruiting class – 18th overall guard – 287th overall recruit – .9027 composite

C – Juice Scruggs
2018 Recruiting class – 4th overall center – 233rd overall recruit – .9118 composite

LG – Eric Wilson
Transfer from Harvard

LT – Rasheed Walker
2018 Recruiting class – 6th overall tackle – 65th overall recruit – .9676 composite

However, due to a preseason injury to projected starter Sal Wormley, this then became the starting lineup for much of the 2021 season:

2021 Starting OL

RT – Caedan Wallace
2019 Recruiting class – 3rd overall guard – 81st overall recruit – .9627 composite

RG – Juice Scruggs
2018 Recruiting class – 4th overall center – 233rd overall recruit – .9118 composite

C – Mike Miranda
2016 Recruiting class – 4th overall center – 445th overall recruit – .8747 composite

LG – Eric Wilson
Transfer from Harvard

LT – Rasheed Walker
2018 Recruiting class – 6th overall tackle – 65th overall recruit – .9676 composite

The shakeup in the lineup ended up being profound as Juice Scruggs had to slide over to guard and longtime Penn State journeyman Mike Miranda filled in the open slot at center.

And I don’t care what anyone says, positions on the offensive line are absolutely, 100% NOT interchangeable. Ask any offensive lineman who played at any of the higher levels.

This isn’t you playing NCAA 14 on your PS3 and sliding a tackle over to center and then moving a guard to tackle with hardly any changes to their overall ratings. Anytime you move positions on the offensive line your responsibilities immediately change, your thought process has to change, and the players you’re being asked to stop change.

So if you’re one of those people still saying the positions are interchangeable? STOP.

Okay, now that I got that off of my chest, let’s move on to the depressing part of the article; How the offensive line actually fared on the season.

The 2021 Penn State offensive line finished 118th in the country in rushing offense (3.16 ypc – 107.6 ypg) and finished in a tie for 95th in sacks allowed (2.67 spg).

There’s no way to possibly spin these numbers into anything other than they are terrible.

I will say this, at times the offensive line did a much better job of keeping a clean pocket for Sean Clifford than they did in the run game. There were many times where Penn State’s quarterbacks had time to look through their progression and find an open receiver.

The “sacks allowed” stat is also slightly inflated as Clifford rolled himself into far too many sacks on the season. Rather than stepping up into the pocket, these sacks were attributed to a bit of happy feet and a side step directly into an oncoming defender.

As for the run game, we recently tried to dissect the issues and come up with a fix for the run game in the future, but I’m not so sure it’s going to be a simple task.

Let me ask you this; What do you want your offensive line to do when a run play is dialed up?

Well, most people would say the five giants need to explode off the snap, find someone, put them on their ass, and then head to the next level of the defense and do the same.

Now, what happens when the offense is running the RPO? What is something the offensive line doesn’t know.

Bingo!

They have no idea if the quarterback is going to hand the ball off for a run or if he is going to chuck it down the field. So based on this, what can’t any of the offensive lineman do?

You guessed it. They cannot fire off the snap and lay waste to everyone in the first two levels of the defense because they don’t want to be more than three yards past the neutral zone if the quarterback decides to throw it.

And here is a very fundamental flaw with the RPO. Specifically, if you don’t have an incredibly talented offensive line working and playing together perfectly. Because in the end, the only person out of the entire 11 guys on offense that knows if it’s going to be a run or pass is the quarterback.

But I’ll let Penn State Football offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich figure that one out, as I am certainly not someone who can criticize his success in the past.

I know it sounds like I’m making excuse after excuse for the offensive line from this season and I’m guessing you think I’ll give them a favorable grade.

Final grade for Penn State Football’s defensive line: D-

Nope.

I still believe they underperformed most of the season and the only reason they didn’t get an “F” was their pass protection was serviceable most of the time.

I would still love to see what the projected line would have done if Wormley was healthy. But like a lot of things in life, we’ll never know the answer.