Blue White Illustrated

GAME OF CHANCE PSU's offense prioritizes balance, but Saquon Barkley still finds a way to shine he echo of the victory bell had barely faded after the season opener when the Heisman hype started. Officially. As part of a 52-0 curtain-raiser against Akron, Saquon Barkley totaled almost 250 all-purpose yards and scored two touch- downs. His performance rated as one of the best in the country for week one. If that entree weren't enough to announce his candidacy for college football's great- est trophy, Penn State's athletic depart- ment also launched a website, its flagship campaign for the star junior running back, just hours after the game. Bannered by the hashtag #HappyVal- leyHeisman, the site features highlights from every game so far. It opened with a video of Barkley leaping over and then smashing into the Zips. When he crossed the goal line two more times against Pitt, those clips were front and center, and when he went all Saquon Barkley again vs. Georgia State, you bet- ter believe that was front-page material as well. With college football's most presti- gious trophy often a popularity contest backed by overall team success, this is PSU's first formal attempt to influence public perception and persuade the masses that the sport's best player re- sides in State College. Aligning with the times, exposing the kid from Coplay, Pa., to the publicity he deserves is a priority within the pro- gram. So long as the Nittany Lions are playing on national television and Barkley is their running back, that's not going to be a problem. Folks already know Saquon Barkley. Rather, the biggest hurdles in his path to the Hesiman are internal forces that are woven into the very fabric of the of- fensive system that helps make him so special. After the first three weeks of the sea- son, no other player from a Power Five conference had more all-purpose yards than Barkley, yet he had 20 or 30 fewer touches than most of the other fron- trunners, and not just the quarterbacks. What gives? Why not let him be a work- horse like other Big Ten feature backs who carry the ball at least 20 times per game? Well, as head coach James Franklin plainly put it at a midweek press conference in September, "Our of- fense doesn't really work like that." And no matter how badly they want their best player to get the most national recognition possible – and they do – they're not going to stray far from Joe Moorhead's proven methods. In his sys- tem, they seldom call plays designed for one particular player. "Calling his num- ber," as the old football adage goes, no longer applies. Instead, quarterback Trace McSorley receives signals from the sideline that indicate a certain grouping of play calls, or a concept. It's then up to him to make the pre- and post-snap reads in order to determine which of his many playmakers gets the ball. Sometimes that's Barkley. A lot of times it's not. "What the defense does truly is going to determine what we do," Franklin ex- plained. "You would love to say we're just going to hand the ball off to Saquon Barkley 35 times a game, but that's not what we do. If we get the look to hand the ball off to Saquon, we will." And we'll enjoy every one of them, as Barkley is one of those players who mixes vast talent with a genuine person- ality that makes it difficult not to pull for him. His acrobatic running style ap- peals to the eye as well. And, yes, the coaches love watching, too. But they especially like it when it works. They want to get him the ball as often as they can, while staying true to what's gotten them this far. They're not going to become one-dimensional and risk losing games when they've got a Rubik's Cube of talent to work with. JUDGMENT CALL T OVER THE LINE Barkley carries tacklers into the end zone for a second- half touch- down in Penn State's victory over Pitt. Photo by Steve Manuel

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