Blue White Illustrated

protect the football. We want to play great defense. We want to be explosive. We want to eliminate explosive plays on de- fense. "This is the model. This is how we want to play consistently." Franklin's comments appeared credible coming in the immediate aftermath of the Nittany Lions' dominant win at Purdue to close out October. The 62-24 romp in West Lafayette showcased the Lions at their most explosive. With Barkley sup- plying an 81-yard touchdown jaunt in the fourth quarter, Penn State finished with 511 yards of total offense on 63 plays from scrimmage. Of those 511 yards, 434 came on 17 "chunk" plays, including four that went for touchdowns. It's been a theme throughout Penn State's season. In their victories, and even in their loss to Pitt in week two, the Lions have been bolstered by a big-play offense that has eschewed plodding progress in favor of short possessions built on chunk plays and capped by touchdowns. A deeper dive into Franklin's thought process shows exactly how important ex- plosive plays have been this year. Through its first 10 games, the Nittany Lion offense produced a total of 4,144 yards on 670 offensive plays. Remarkably, 3,018 of those yards came on chunk plays, defined as passing plays of 15 or more yards and rushing plays of 10 or more. The Lions produced 124 chunk plays dur- ing that span, 64 of them runs and 60 passes. In other words, the Nittany Lions aren't just producing chunk plays, they're also relying heavily on them. Broken into per- centages, 72.8 percent of Penn State's total offensive yards heading into its road finale against Rutgers had come from 18.5 percent of the plays it had run from scrimmage. The Nittany Lion offensive line has played a key role in the success of the of- fense, protecting McSorley and opening up lanes for Barkley. Following the Lions' 24-21 victory over Ohio State, Franklin dubbed the entire unit his Of- fensive Player of the Week, and he high- lighted the role of explosive plays in the Moorhead keeping Nittany Lions on the attack P enn State fans were excited about Joe Moorhead's offense from the moment he was hired last Decem- ber after four seasons as head coach at Ford- ham. That excitement has only grown now that the Nittany Lions have shown the potential of his read- option attack. Moorhead recently took the time to speak with reporters about the offense's development in his first season as coordinator. ON THE PROGRESS HE'S SEEN Through our first eight games, I would say I'm pleased but not satisfied. I think we've certainly come close to meeting our ex- pectations in some categories and fallen short a little bit in others. Ultimately, we kind of identified the spots we need to be successful to give ourselves a chance to win – scoring offense, explosive plays, turnover margin – and I think we've been pretty good there. Obviously [there are] some others that we need to improve on, too. ON MAKING HALFTIME ADJUSTMENTS When the half ends, we go in as an entire coaching staff and Coach [James] Franklin sits in with us. We go over each formation and diagnose the informa- tion, see what coverages they're playing, the fronts, the pressures, and we match that up with what our game plan is, and kind of see what we have that was work- ing, what we have that fits, what we have in the game plan that maybe we haven't called and would work better in the sec- ond half. Then we keep a menu of our entire system and say, "All right, we did- n't have this during the week, but we're seeing this look, this may work," and we break off and the coaches get with their players individually and then I kind of bring everybody up at the end and talk to them one last time before we head out. ON TRACE McSORLEY I think the deci- sion-making has been pretty good. There are rarely times when we come in and look at the film and say he misdiag- nosed the coverage or misread a read and threw it to the wrong person. So from that standpoint, he understands where he is going with the ball and why. From that, you talk about completion per- centage. The goal that I've had over the years and what we reached at Fordham was 65 percent as the number we're looking for. A lot things go into that. Certainly it's not an excuse, it's a reality, where we are, the number of balls that we throw down the field, the number of times we see tightly contested man cov- erage on third-and-medium-plus. … I think part of avoiding sacks is Trace making great decisions when nothing's there and throwing the ball away. So I don't want to penalize him for that. Cer- tainly 50-55 percent is not where we would like him to be at. He would like to be at 65 percent or higher, but I think he is trending in the right direction. ON BALL SECURITY I think Coach Franklin does an awesome job. We work on ball security here more than any place I've ever been, including my time JOE MOORHEAD C O A C H S P E A K

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