Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1535618
J U N E / J U L Y 2 0 2 5 31 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M T he Penn State offense has gotten off to a good start under Andy Ko- telnicki. During his first season as coordinator, the Nittany Lions fielded the fourth-most-explosive offense in college football. It was an impressive feat for a coach with less than 12 months on the job. However, the issues against the best teams in the country persisted. It doesn't matter if you're the fourth-most-explo- sive offense in the nation when you lose to the third-most-explosive offense in Ohio State, or when you struggle to put up points against Notre Dame in the Col- lege Football Playoff semifinals. So, what must Kotelnicki and Penn State do to improve in Year 2? Evolve. Evolution is a slow process in which incremental changes add up over time. Bearing that in that mind, Penn State's offense in 2025 will likely be very simi- lar to what it was last year. There were ideas and plays that worked, and it would be a terrible idea to throw all of that away and start fresh. "The biggest and most important thing when you're trying to evolve as an offense is, have you [established] a good set of parameters?" Kotelnicki said this spring. "Are your parameters as an of- fense tight enough, but still wide enough that we can grow, we can expand? Can we ask our players to evolve and do maybe just a little bit more?" He offered a hypothetical example of how the base offense sets up other ideas and concepts that run counter to it but play off the original idea. "If we can run power, can we run another run scheme that complements power?" he asked. "Or, can we run a play-action pass that complements power, or a screen in the backside so that those little wrinkles are going to protect your base plays that you're do- ing really, really well? How much can that expand and evolve?" Like many of you, I imagined that after every season, Kotelnicki sat down, watched the film from the previous year and made the changes in February that he wanted to see for the next campaign. It's logical to think the plan would be set in stone early so that the rest of the year can be spent practicing it. But that's not necessarily the case. While I'm sure the offensive staff has ideas about what it would like to do in the fall, Kotelnicki made it clear this spring that the plan was still being developed. "It's 15 practices, which is awesome," he said. "They're building a body of work. But really, when you start getting into game-planning stuff, you need to see fall camp, and you need to see the evolution. … There are a lot of practices, a lot of summer [workouts]. There's a lot of lifting and lots of training. There's a lot that can occur, so you need to see that before you really can sit there and thoroughly do that." While the running game remains intact from last year, the passing game hit a hard reset with the loss of tight end Tyler Warren and wideouts Har- rison Wallace III and Omari Evans. Those three players ranked first, second and fourth on the team in receptions in 2024, combining to make 171 catches for 2,368 yards and 17 touchdowns. To help make up for those losses, the staff signed receivers Devonte Ross, Kyron Hudson and Trebor Pena out of the transfer portal. Their presence has given rise to hope that the team will be able to field a balanced attack this fall, but there's still a learning curve, even for three players with senior eligibility. On top of that, the tight ends room missed sophomore Luke Reynolds for most of the spring with a minor injury, while redshirt sophomore Andrew Rappleyea was still recovering from the unspecified injury that ended his 2024 season after just one game. It's hard to put a puzzle together when some of the pieces are missing. To help him see the big picture, Ko- telnicki has said he strives to take a "player-led" approach. He wants to design his offense around the strengths of his best players, and then he wants to give those players as much time as pos- sible to manifest new skills. "As coaches, you can pigeonhole guys and they can get siloed [when you think], this is what they are and that's it," he said. "The reality is, every player, no matter how old or young, deserves [an opportunity] and will improve in this program." ■ O P I N I O N THOMAS FRANK CARR T F R A N K .C A R R @ O N 3 .C O M Evolutionary Process Guides Andy Kotelnicki's Offense Kotelnicki will be looking to build on a debut season in which his Penn State offense ranked third in the Big Ten in points (33.1) and yards (430.2) per game. PHOTO BY MARK SELDERS/PENN STATE ATHLETICS UPON FURTHER REVIEW