Blue White Illustrated

N O V E M B E R 8 , 2 0 1 7 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 9 Throughout his oBen breathtaking junior season, Saquon Barkley has focused on the team's performance rather than his indi- vidual contributions. That was the case again following Penn State's 27-24 loss at Michigan State. The Spartans contained Barkley better than any opponent the Nittany Lions had faced all season. Penn State's standout junior running back rushed for only 63 yards in the team's 27-24 loss, and while there had been other games in which the Lions weren't able to create space for him on the ground, he had usually found other ways of making a big impact. That wasn't the case in East Lansing, as Michigan State held him to 33 receiving yards and didn't allow him to break loose for any big kickoff returns. ABer the loss to the Spartans, the college football commentariat began to express some skepticism about Barkley's chances of winning the sport's top individual honor. It appeared to some that the Land Grant Trophy was not the only piece of football hardware that the Nittany Lions had for- feited with their second defeat in as many weeks. So, too, had they cost themselves a chance to win the second Heisman Trophy in school history. At the moment, Okla- homa quarterback Baker Mayfield is at the front of the field, with Notre Dame's Josh Adams and Stanford's Bryce Love moving up fast. But true to form, Barkley was focused on the big picture following the game. "It's football," he said. "I've been having a lot of success with the ball in my hands in space. It comes with the game of football. A lot of people are going to try to take that away. I run a swing route and you see peo- ple flying to the swing route. So the de- fenses are trying to do different things to take [away certain plays]. If they're dou- ble-teaming or if they're overplaying or trying to stop me from catching the ball or getting the ball out of the backfield, it's open for other people." The attention that the Spartans paid to Barkley had indeed created opportunities elsewhere on the field. Trace McSorley threw for 381 yards and three touchdowns, as the Lions held a lead for most of the rain-interrupted game. But he also lobbed three interceptions, and that was too many turnovers to overcome against a ranked op- ponent on the road. The Lions were coming off a 39-38 loss at Ohio State in which Barkley did most of his damage in the first 15 seconds of the game. His 99-yard touchdown on the opening kickoff got Penn State off to a blazing start, but the running game bogged down in the second half, and the Lions weren't able to make first downs on the ground and run out the clock. Barkley carried six times in the fourth quarter, and on four of those at- tempts he was tackled for a loss. He fin- ished the game with 44 rushing yards, and Penn State managed only 91 rushing yards as a team. The problems that Barkley experienced against Ohio State and Michigan State were foreshadowed in earlier games against In- diana and Northwestern. He rushed for 56 yards on 20 carries against the Hoosiers and 75 yards on 16 carries a week later against the Wildcats. Even with those numbers factored in, Barkley is still second in the Football Bowl Subdivision in all-purpose yards heading into the Rutgers game with an average of 195.7 per game. But the Lions' inability to run the ball against either Ohio State or Michigan was one of the primary factors that cost them a shot at the College Foot- ball Playoff. Why the low output in those games? Coach James Franklin said it was partly due to the way Penn State's RPO offense is designed. Under second-year coordi- nator Joe Moorhead, the Lions take a hit- 'em-where-they-ain't approach. If the defense is preoccupied with the ground game, you throw the ball. Against Michi- gan State, for example, the Lions ap- peared to concede that they weren't going to be able to run it, so Barkley got only 14 carries, while McSorley attempted 47 passes. "We can't get into situations where we're going to hand the ball off just to hand the ball off to Saquon Barkley," Franklin said. "That's not who we are or what we want to be offensively. We're a spread RPO offense. If you decide to overload the box based on numbers, we're going to throw. There are a lot of offenses across the country that do it that way and are successful. This formula has worked pretty good for us for the last year. We've been winning games. We lost the last two, so obviously it's easy now to critique it. But we want to get better at running the ball. We want to get better at protecting the quarterback. But we've had one of the more explosive offenses in the country in terms of yards, in terms of points." One other explanation for the team's subpar rushing performances in recent games is that the offensive line hasn't been as effective as had been hoped com- ing off of the offense's strong showing in the second half of the 2016 season. The Lions went into the current season with a relatively young line, as three sopho- mores were in the unit that started the opener against Akron. That may not have been an insurmountable problem if everyone had stayed healthy, but the Lions haven't had much luck in that re- gard. They used five different starting combinations in their first nine games and have been forced to rely heavily on redshirt freshman Will Fries at tackle and occasionally at guard. ABer the Michigan State game, Franklin said he thought the Lions weren't as phys- ically tough as they needed to be on the of- fensive and defensive lines. "We're too finesse [oriented]," he said, and he reiter- ated that point earlier this week. "I don't think this is something that's been [emerging] the last two weeks. We were this way last year when we won the Big Ten championship," Franklin said. "We have been saying internally and externally that we want to be a more physical team up front. And when I say that, I'm not just talking about the offensive line; I'm talking about tight ends, I'm talking about all of it. I think it's something that we can do a bet- ter job of and need to do a better job of to take that next step as a program, especially when you get into games like [the Michigan State game] where the weather can make it maybe a little bit more challenging to throw the ball the way you want to throw the ball." M A T T   H E R B | M A T T @ B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M Lions strive to get running game back on track

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