Blue White Illustrated

and you see people flying to the swing route. So the defenses 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 touch- downs, as the Lions held a lead for most of the rain-interrupted game. But he also lobbed three interceptions, and those were too many turnovers to overcome against a ranked opponent 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 97-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 attempts he was tackled for a loss. He finished the game with 44 rushing yards, and Penn State managed only 91 rushing yards as a team. The problems that Barkley experi- enced against Ohio State and Michigan State were foreshadowed in earlier games against Indiana and Northwest- ern. He rushed for 56 yards on 20 car- ries against the Hoosiers and 75 yards on 16 carries a week later against the Wildcats. Even with those numbers factored in, Barkley was still among the leaders in the Football Bowl Subdivision in all-purpose yards with an average of 184.6 per game through 10 games. But the Lions' inabil- ity to run the ball against either Ohio State or Michigan State was one of the primary factors that cost them a shot at the College Football 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 Michigan State, for example, the Lions appeared to concede that they weren't going to be able to run it, so Barkley got only 14 carries, while Mc- Sorley 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 for- mula 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 coming off of a 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 POSTGAME SALUTE Barkley shakes hands with Michigan State players following Penn State's loss to the Spartans earlier this month. Photo by Steve Manuel

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