Blue White Illustrated

V S . S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A help this team… get back to the national championship levels where it's been in the past. I want to be a part of a team like that, so that's what I want to bring. I'll do everything I can to help the team out and bring it to that level." O'Connor transferred after the 2014 season, and McSorley served as Christian Hackenberg's backup the following year. His most extensive action came in the final game of the 2015 season, as he came on in relief of an injured Hackenberg in the TaxSlayer Bowl and kept the Nittany Lions competitive in a 24-17 loss to Geor- gia. After the game, Hackenberg announced that he was forgoing his senior season to enter the NFL Draft, and McSorley be- came the leading candidate to replace him by virtue of his limited experience as a backup. He looked great in the Blue- White Game, but questions lingered, and they had less to do with whether he had the potential to outperform his predeces- sor than whether he could orchestrate the Nittany Lions' revamped offense while managing to stay healthy himself. Hack- enberg had absorbed a series of body slams while playing his final two seasons behind an inexperienced offensive line, and it was unclear at the time whether the Lions' offensive front would be dramati- cally better in 2016. It was clear that Moorhead's new offense would require the quarterback to carry the ball more than Hackenberg did. The Lions stuttered to a 2-2 start, hand- icapped by defensive injuries and a slow- starting offense. McSorley had produced middling results as the team approached the second half of the schedule. Through five games, he had completed 93 of 158 passes, with only six touchdowns and three interceptions, and he ranked 52nd in the Football Bowl Subdivision with a passer efficiency rating of 140.4. But as the Lions began piling up victo- ries – their streak stood at nine after the win over Wisconsin – McSorley's ranking started to climb, going from 52 to 38 to 34 to 23 and ultimately to 14. During that span of games, he completed 113 of 200 passes, tossing 19 touchdowns and only two interceptions, good for a season-best 156.6 efficiency rating. Further, in the clearest indication of his high-reward impact on Penn State's offense, he posted the best yards-per-completion average in the FBS heading into bowl season, besting the likes of Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jack- son, Deshaun Watson and Jake Browning with a mark of 16.31. For his efforts, McSorley received sec- ond-team All-Big Ten honors from the coaches and media, and also from The Associated Press. He's now Penn State's record-holder for single-season passing yards, having thrown for 3,360 to break Matt McGloin's 2012 mark by 94 yards with one more game to go. Having steadily improved throughout the season, exceeding all but the most op- timistic of internal expectations, McSor- ley has rewarded his coach's faith. In a recent interview with the NFL Network, he said that one of the reasons he came to Penn State was because Franklin thought he had the potential to play quarterback at the college level. "A lot of schools were saying I would play safety and were recruiting me for other positions, and Coach Franklin was very adamant that he wanted me to play quarterback and he believed in my ability to play quarterback," McSorley said. "I think that was the biggest thing, his belief in me and how he continued to show to me and my family that he believed in what I could do as a quarterback." Turning doubters into devotees through the course of his debut season, McSorley has given every indication that he will continue to prove that Franklin's evalua- tion was entirely accurate. ■ SNAP JUDGMENT McSorley was at his best at the end of the Big Ten season. Against Michigan State and Wisconsin he thew for 760 yards, with eight touchdowns and no interceptions. Photo by Steve Manuel

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