Blue White Illustrated

PHIL'S CORNER Penn State has the talent to field a balanced offense in 2013 t seems there are a whole host of Penn State football fans out there who have concluded that the Nittany Lions will have to perform just as they did last year on offense if they hope to duplicate last season's 8-4 record. When preseason practice began on Aug. 5, most of the program's followers – fans and media members alike – were focused on the competition between Christian Hackenberg and Tyler Ferguson for the starting quarterback job. That was to be expected. Any time there's a vacancy at the most prominent position on the depth chart, there's going to be a lot of speculation about how the competition is likely to play out. But I believe people are making a major miscalculation if they think Penn State will ask its starting quarterback to do what Matt McGloin did a year ago. This year's offense is not going to be a carbon copy of last year's. That's because the scenario this season is very different from the one that Bill O'Brien and his coaching staff faced last August. At the beginning of preseason practice a year ago, O'Brien was confronting a near-impossible situation on offense. Running back Silas Redd had just transferred to Southern Cal, while wide receiver Justin Brown had left for Oklahoma following the announcement of major NCAA sanctions against Penn State in July. Their departures were especially problematic given that the coaching staff had designed the of- I fense around their skills. Redd was going to be the team's go-to running back, while Brown was positioned to be McGloin's No. 1 receiver. When preseason practice began, O'Brien had no idea how effective Bill Belton, Derek Day, Michael Zordich and Zach Zwinak would be at running back. Nor did he likely imagine the type of breakout season Allen Robinson would enjoy in Brown's absence. And you can bet he didn't expect his tight ends to total 83 catches for 1,097 yards and 10 touchdowns. At that point, with the season still a month away, the most stable facet of the offense was probably the quarterback position. McGloin was not getting a lot of respect outside the program – one preseason magazine labeled him the Big Ten's worst starting quarterback – but he was a fifth-year senior, and he had two seasons of experience as a part-time starter under his belt. McGloin went on to defy the skeptics, enjoying a great senior year with 270 completions in 446 pass attempts for 3,266 yards. He threw 24 touchdown passes and only five interceptions. This year, the situation is completely reversed: The supporting cast is proven, while the quarterback position is in flux. Penn State returns eight starters on offense, plus 19 lettermen and six additional players with starting experience. O'Brien has the top returning wide receiver in the Big Ten in Robinson, a 1,000-yard rusher in Zwinak and a group of tight ends – Kyle Carter, Jesse James, Matt Lehman and Adam Breneman – that may be the nation's best. Combine the skill position talent with an offensive line that may be the most talented and physically dominant unit Penn State has fielded in close to a decade, and it's unlikely that O'Brien will have to put the same burden on his quarterback that he did last year. That's not to say Hackenberg and Ferguson will have an easy time learning Penn State's NFLderived offense. They will most definitely have to do their homework. But it's reasonable to expect O'Brien and quarterbacks coach Charlie Fisher to make the kind of adjustments that will ease their transition to elite college competition. O'Brien hinted this past spring, while on tour with the Coaches Caravan, that the Nittany Lions would be taking a different approach. "You start all over again," he said. "We did a really good job [in the off-season], a better job than we did last year, because last year we were new, and in the offensive meetings it was just me standing up in front of the staff and teaching them the offense. "Nobody in that staff room when we first got here knew the offense. I brought it from New England. "This year, the guys on the staff felt a lot more comfortable with the offense, so we were able to go back, study what we did last year and tweak a lot of it." Tweaks, of course, are not the same as wholesale changes. In his second season as head coach, O'Brien will most likely build upon what Penn State did best in 2012. Expect the Nittany Lions to balance the running and passing games in an effort to take maximum advantage of the talent at the skill positions and the physical prowess of the offensive line. I don't believe O'Brien will open up the season against Syracuse expecting his starting quarterback to duplicate what McGloin did in 2012. The key to Penn State's success on offense this season will be balance.

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