Penn State Sports Magazine
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tensely devoted to the game. Is it fair to say the same of him? YURCICH Yeah, I think Sean's intensity is very, very good. Very high, I should say. He's a high-energy guy. He loves it. His "want to" is super good. He wants to be an excellent quarterback and it's very important to him. It's right there. BWI What does his development through the summer look like? From where he was in the spring to where you feel he needs to be in the fall, what needs to happen? YURCICH Well, we just got done with a three-week discretionary period, so there's not much I could have done with him there. A lot of it's on him. The sum- mer work, there are a lot of cut-ups available for him, and I think you'll see guys grow a lot de- pending on how much they put into it. I think what's really interest- ing is to sit down and listen to a quarterback talk about how they watch tape. If you're the quarterback coach, you're sit- ting there and you're wonder- ing: They've got all this time and they're spending hours in the film room on their own, but what does that mean? How are they processing the information and are they using that time well? Do they know what they're looking at? Do they know how to watch film? So I sit there and I'm just like, OK, talk through how you're seeing this video on the screen. What are the things that you're asking yourself? Just go ahead, open up and talk, think out loud as you're watching this tape. You'd be amazed. Sean, I think, is very good at it. But with young quarterbacks in general, you have to make sure that if they're spend- ing X amount of hours in the facility watching tape or watching tape in gen- eral, whether it's on their phone on ThunderCloud or whatever, that they do have a process, that they understand what they're looking at. And then it's like, OK, this is open, so I'm going there. Done. Well, that was my first read. OK, he did this, so I threw it to the number one progression and now it's on to the next play. No, no, no. Peel it back. Go back, go back, go back. So now, let's just imagine if the first read was taken away by the flat defender. Let's just say they buzz. Well, now use your eyes and try to imagine what that would look like if you had to progress on. Sometimes you just assume that of course they would do that, but they don't know that. Sometimes you have to remind yourself to do that. It's a fun process. And the more you're in it some- times, the longer you coach, I think sometimes the more you assume the players know. You have to strip back down every year and continue to just ask question after question after question. As simple as you think it is as a coach, because you've been through it five mil- lion times, it's only the 20th time they've heard it, and they need to hear it a thousand times. BWI Is how to watch film the first thing you have to teach when you come in? YURCICH Well, I don't think you have the luxury of doing that first. You have to install first. … That's the way that I like to teach it. There has to be a pro- gression, to a degree. At the same time, I feel that you have to piece it together and give them a little bit, then draw it back, and then a little bit more, and then draw it back. Then bounce around a lit- tle bit. And then at a certain time, it has to be, OK, since we have a general idea of how we call personnel, how we call for- mations, what this means, what that means, now let's start getting into pro- tections, for example. When you start just talking about protections, now you ON THE RISE Theo Johnson and his fel- low tight ends will figure prominently in Yurcich's plans for the PSU of- fense. "I think tight end is the most unique position on the football field," the Lions' new OC said. Photo by Mark Selders/Penn State Athletics >>