Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1390373
YURCICH I don't know. I just hope we win them all. BWI How do you get there? YURCICH It's a process, that's for sure. I don't think there's any magic word that you can use or anything that anybody has not thought of. I mean, if we had that answer, then we would always be the number one offense in the country and people would get bored and wouldn't even watch football anymore. So I think it's a process. It's ongoing. It's ever-changing. It's a very humbling game. I've watched a bunch of football, and it just seems like everything changes, everything develops. Defenses catch up rather fast. They evolve. So you've got to continue to evolve. You cannot rest. You have to play with a sense of urgency. You have to have really good communication systems. I think that's key. I think your players [need to] understand what things are called and how things are called and why things are called. Your language is so important and your culture. It's so important to be on the same page, and we as coaches must understand that and program our guys to understand that our system, our lan- guage, and how we talk to one another, it has to be clear, it has to be concise, it has to be meaningful. One word can mean a lot of different things to our players, but we all have to make sure that it means the same thing to all players. So that's part of your culture, it's part of how you program it, it's part of your system. Once you have that down, I think then it's a matter of repetition and making sure that you have a good plan moving forward, being able to recognize how to anticipate, and knowing what problems may exist, and being able to anticipate those problems. BWI What progress do you think you've been able to make since you got here? YURCICH That's a great question. I think it's something, I think it's up, it's going to be maybe a little bit down, and it's up, it's down. But as long as it keeps on trending this way [that's positive]. That's what we want, the growth on an incline. As long as that happens over time, we're good. There are going to be good days and there are going to be not- so-good days. The thing that you want to see is more banking of back-to-back good days. So if we have a good day, then a bad day, good day and bad day, good day and bad day, well, sooner or later, you want to say good day, good day, good day, bad day, good day, good day, good day, good day, bad day. And then it con- tinues to build in that direction. BWI Would it be fair to say that you prioritize the preparation side of the game as much as, if not more than, the skills that players bring to the field? YURCICH I think that it has to go hand- in-hand. I think you have to have your everyday skill developers. So every day you're trying to develop them and rein in on those skills, and then you're trying to make sure that those skills show up within your schemes, right? You want the fundamentals to be shown every day, to whatever schemes that you're run- ning. I think the more that you can carry over your game plan, the better, so we're going to try to run the same concepts as much as possible to create that learning and mastery. At the same time, you want to be hard to defend, so the more that we can get better at, the harder we're going to be to defend. BWI Everyone is so captivated by the passing game, but how do you mesh the running game with it, and what impor- tance do you place on effectively run- ning the ball? YURCICH I think one of the most inter- esting things about that is that in foot- ball, you can simulate a full-speed pass game way easier. What's difficult is to get good at the running game based on our rules in the NCAA – the minimum amount of practices you get to tackle and to even have your full equipment on, and to be able to thud up, and to be able to simulate the full-force blocking and the impacts and the true cutting that's necessary, the running through tackles, the laying out. How many tackles are there where defenders are leaving their feet? I mean, every play. But in practice, it's very rare that we actually leave our feet to make plays. So it's very difficult, in my opinion, to get good at the run game just based on practice. I think your run game will get better over time throughout the season because you're getting actual practice in games, if you will. And that's a tough pill to swallow because we have to get good at the run game, and we have to be phys- ical and come downhill. I mean, this is Penn State, who are we kidding? We're going to run the football with our physi- cal mindset that's going to be our iden- tity. If you're going to play the piano and try to get good at the piano, what do you have to do? You have to play the piano. What's the best way to play the piano? When the lights are on. The recital. The more recitals you have, the more pres- sure is on you, the more you have to play in your tuxedo, the better you're going to get. That's a fact. That's what's going to happen. It's when the lights are on. [If] we can simulate the game and really play real football, we're going to get better at that. But you've got to simulate the game as much as you possibly can. That's the challenge. BWI How much of that toughness and offensive identity is shaped by what you have up front? YURCICH We're going to be tough, and we're going to be physical, and we're going to run the football. There's no question about it. Up front, I think at Penn State, we're always going to have a physical offensive line. We're always going to have a talented offensive line. We don't see that changing. That's who we are, it's what we've been, and we're going to continue to do that. So to me, that really doesn't factor in, like, what if we're not... what does that mean? We're going to be. That's our mindset – posi- tive attitude, our core value number one. And so our positive attitude, and who we are, and what we're going to be is, we're going to be a very strong, tough, physical, athletic, overwhelming offen- sive line. BWI Sean Clifford described you as in-