Penn State Sports Magazine
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3 8 J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 4 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M O P I N I O N THOMAS FRANK CARR T F R A N K .CA R R @ O N 3 .C O M P enn State got its new offensive coordinator on Dec. 1 when it hired Andy Kotelnicki from Kansas. A protégé of head coach Lance Leipold with the Jayhawks and in previous stops at Buffalo and Wisconsin-Whitewater, Kotelnicki is now tasked with turning around a Nittany Lion offense that has been good but has lacked the creativity and game-day ability to go toe-to-toe with the best in the Big Ten. Kotelnicki succeeds Mike Yurcich at PSU, and it would be a mistake to side- step the biggest lesson from Yurcich's three-year run as the Lions' offensive coordinator. The lesson is this: No mat- ter what your offense does, it must serve the players. Kotelnicki understands that impera- tive. In a video tutorial from 2020, he outlined his philosophy as a coordinator. "I've been lucky," he said. "I've been an offensive coordinator for 15 years now. I've coached every level, and I've coached every position. If you're coordi- nating something, the definition in the dictionary is 'to bring different elements of a complex activity or organization into a relationship that will ensure efficiency or harmony.'" The core of Kotelnicki's approach involves organization, efficiency and simplicity for the players. That dove- tails with what PSU head coach James Franklin outlined as the positives he felt the team achieved in its final two games under interim coordinators Ja'Juan Se- ider and Ty Howle. From a cultural perspective, Ko- telnicki seems perfect. He has shown adaptability in his approach to football. But teams also need an identity and core plays. The hardest part of assess- ing Kotelnicki's body of work is sifting through the changes year over year to find the elements that he has clung to through his own development. The first of these threads we'll pull at is the outside zone running scheme. The outside zone is a system of running that tries to steal a gap from the defense at the line of scrimmage through lateral combi- nation blocks by the offensive line. Dating back to his early days at Buffalo, Kotelnicki has used the outside zone as a bedrock of his offense. In 2019, roughly a quarter of the team's executed run plays were outside zone, and Kotelnicki paired this concept with its traditional partner, the inside zone. When he headed to Kansas with Leipold, Kotelnicki changed his run- ning game slightly but meaningfully. He abandoned the traditional inside zone and shifted to a man-blocking concept. Both man and zone blocking rely on double- teams from the of- fensive line at the point of attack, but man blocking uses traditional "down- hill" blocks moving forward at the de- fense instead of at a lateral angle. While we don't know the exact rea- sons for the switch, we can see that Kotelnicki isn't a slave to a system or scheme. In the passing game, he has looked to get the ball downfield. His goal is to isolate coverage defenders, usually safeties, on receivers and generate posi- tive matchups for the offense. While some might think this is exclusive to his time in the Big 12, Buffalo generated a 7 percent Big Time Throw rate in 2019 despite leading the Mid-American Con- ference in rushing attempts and playing two quarterbacks. Big Time Throws are defined by Pro Football Focus as passes with excellent location and timing that are generally thrown downfield. The option game is another strong thread that ties his time in Buffalo and Kansas together. During the past three seasons, the Jayhawks used the read op- tion on 29 percent of their run snaps. That's the most in the Big 12 and would be second to Rutgers in the Big Ten over that time. That number is consistent with his fi- nal years in Buffalo, where he employed the read option on 26 percent of the team's run snaps. RPO, or run-pass option, is another trick that Kotelnicki has used throughout his career. Buffalo ran the RPO on nearly 30 percent of its offensive snaps in 2019. But the most characteristic part of Kotelnicki's offense comes from motion. Kansas used motion in the past three seasons on 67.5 percent of its plays. For comparison, Penn State used motion on 41 percent of its offensive snaps over that same span. Ultimately, the idea is to maximize the amount of field that the opponent must defend in the hope of producing explosive plays. "Are you doing a good job stretching out the field horizontally and vertically?" Kotelnicki asked during his Zoom clinic. "I talk about distortion in football a lot. It's my new favorite word. What are we doing to spread the field out?" During Kotelnicki's time at Kansas, the Jayhawks averaged an explosive run on 16 percent of their rushing attempts and an explosive pass on 18 percent of their throws. That second number, in particular, is impressive, considering the team didn't have a single season with one starting quarterback from start to finish. From game plan to style of play and preparation to production, it seems that Penn State has found a good fit at of- fensive coordinator. We'll see if he can reproduce those results in the Big Ten. ■ Kotelnicki oversaw a Kansas offense that finished fourth in the Big 12 with an average of 33.6 points per game during the 2023 regular season. PHOTO COURTESY KANSAS ATHLETICS Efficiency, Versatility Are Among Andy Kotelnicki's Goals Upon Further Review