Football is Chaos: How Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurich is preparing his new starting quarterback
Penn State quarterback coach and offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich has a big task this year. He’s the general behind an offense with a brand-new starting quarterback. No matter if it’s the expected starter of Drew Allar, his 2022 classmate Beau Pribula, or freshman Jaxon Smolik. None of those first and second-year quarterbacks have started a college football game.
So how do you prepare a new quarterback for his first start?
Young quarterbacks and the knowledge gap
Football is both an intricate and complex game and brutally simple. Neither side knows what will happen after the center snaps the ball to the quarterback, and what transpires next is a chaotic set of reactions built on each side’s context clues and assumptions.
The goal of the offensive coordinator is to anticipate the defensive game plan and attack. Yet, the quarterback’s understanding of what will happen is paramount to that plan working. But with a young starter, the data gap can be immense. So how do you bridge that gap if you’re the Penn State staff?
“I think you talk through as many situations as possible. At the same time, you try to keep it as simple as you can. So there is a little bit of a dance that goes along with it, too, where you’re trying to build confidence,” Yurcich said earlier this summer.
Riding the line between confidence and chaos
But keeping it too simple will result in an unprepared signal caller. After all, every defense tries to trick the quarterback, especially a young player. But, the quarterback has a dual responsibility to intimately know his offense, which is a work in progress for a young quarterback like the ones in the Penn State quarterback room.
“At the end of the day, our guys have to know where to go with the ball, when to go with the ball, be on time, get rid of the football to the correct people. And how do you do that? You try to give them as many looks as possible, but then you try to also gear it towards the direction, towards organization, and to where there’s a structure behind it so it’s just not straight chaos,” Yurich said.
“But football is a chaotic game, so there needs to be a little bit of that mixed in to make sure that, yes, they’re progressing in a confident manner and structured manner. But yes, we want to make sure that they can handle the stress when it comes. So you have to prepare for every situation, and yet you have to make sure that you’re focusing on the majors, the things that you anticipate seeing the majority of the time have to be a focus.”
And it’s not a one-way street. The best way to make a quarterback comfortable is to run plays he understands and likes executing. It’s something that Allar says he noticed about Yurcich during his first season. Speaking on Next Up with Adam Brennaman, Allar explained how Yurchich began the process of grooming him to start well before the 2023 offseason.
“I have a little bit more say about what I don’t like and what I do like. That’s one of the things I found really cool last year. Coach Yurcich would ask you for your five favorite plays for third and short, third and medium, and third and long.
He’d do it with every single quarterback, not just Sean. If I had something drastically different from Sean, he wouldn’t call that play when I went in. He definitely calls the games to the quarterback’s comfort. Even throughout spring ball, he’d ask me a lot of questions like ‘Do you like this?’ ‘What don’t you like about it?’ and asked me for input on plays.”
Yurcich learning to be a better coach at Penn State
That skill might not come naturally to the fiery Yurcich. Yurcich is one of the most engaged and animated coaches we’ve observed at Penn State’s open practice. He’s loud, emotional, and gets into it. During the walk-through portion of practice, the former California Univeristy (PA) quarterback will emulate defenders, dropping suddenly into coverage to simulate a defender the quarterback and receivers must read. He does it all with an unmistakable energy.
Yurich is demanding and specific.
“He’s just loud in general. He’s just naturally loud. It can seem like he’s yelling at you, but it’s from the right place in his heart because he wants you to do the best you can do,” Allar said.
But two-way communication is something that he’s worked on at Penn State. It’s the area he thinks he’s grown the most as a coordinator over the year.
“Probably listening. Listening to everything, not just the head coach, but your other staff members. Being able to take the emotion out of it and look at it from a different perspective. I say that’s listening. It’s just kind of like a perspective, getting a different viewpoint from it.
Asking quarterbacks what they want to run might not come naturally. Yurcich had to learn to tone down his passion and intensity to listen and learn from others while at Penn State.
“Sometimes you can get too close to it, and then the emotions take over. And so being able to step back and actually looking down upon the situation as you’re looking down on the staff room, on a staff meeting, as if you’re looking at yourself from a satellite and everybody else around you and how everything else is interacting and just trying to get a different perspective on things.
I think that’s been very helpful. And I think that’s one of the areas that I’ve grown. Relationship with players trying to get better relationships with them. Coach is really big into relationships here at Penn State, and I’m trying to grow in that regard. And, you know, I just want to continue to get better at every facet,” Yurcich said.
All in the name of efficiency
In the high-stakes world of college football, there’s no room for ego or passion to get in the way of efficiency. During a college football season, every minute counts. The NCAA has rules on how long and intense Penn State can practice. When you factor in school responsibilities for players, the best answer has to win. If that means asking quarterbacks and assistants what they think the best plan of attack is, so be it. That doesn’t mean Yurich won’t add plays and wrinkles from week to week. His passion and creativity are the key to his success as a play caller. But there’s only so much you can do.
According to the Penn State offensive coordinator, this lack of time and practice is the biggest roadblock to the game plan each week.
“The amount of volume that you’re trying to get from the greased board to the field. Because in college football, we talk about all the time you’re playing games and or back-to-back usually.”
“You’re going to have a couple of wrinkles that you’re going to talk about [and] some situations that you’re going to talk about on Thursday and Friday. But for the most part, you have two days of practice, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then it’s done,” Yurcich said.
If you’re not careful, you can waste too much time trying to add new tricks and wrinkles. Penn State returns eight starters this year and has a veteran core around an ascending young skill group. However, if the new quarterback can’t get it right, it doesn’t matter.
“So, really, you have to have one day to get it right on your first down. So you’re calling a play-action shot, and it’s brand new, and you’re blocking it in. How many reps are you going to get of that particular shot play?
“That’s a first-down call in practice that week. And so the amount of volume that you have drawn up that you innovate, to what you have to teach in the classroom and then practice on the field because you haven’t done it yet, that’s what you have to consider,” Yurcich explained
Allar built to handle the workload at Penn State
However, Allar might be the guy to handle this mental workload. He played a significant amount of snaps last season and learned how to prepare from Clifford. Not only that, but he says he’s putting in the work to be great at Penn State.
“I’m a film junkie so I’m always watching NFL teams. I’m always in there with one of the coaches watching cutups, specifically like the Rams, 49ers, Benglas, Vikings, Dolphins, a bunch of west coast teams. They’re all the same system but they’re all doing things differently. It’s easy to see how easy it is for quarterbacks to play in that system so we’ve incorporated some of that into our offense,” Allar said.
Allar mentions the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree in the NFL without saying it specifically. Shanahan’s masterful playcalling and creative motions break defenses in the NFL, leading to easy, open completions for quarterbacks. Yards after the catch are also hallmark of the Shanahan offense. It’s a combination that could be deadly this year because Penn State head coach James Franklin thinks Allar has the skills to capitalize on that,
“The other thing that happens with arm strength, everybody gets excited about arm strength, but you better have accuracy,” Franklin said. “But when you do have arm strength and accuracy, it creates opportunities for yards after the catch.”
Football is still Chaos
Remember, no matter what system you try to steal from, football is chaos. The defense is doing everything in its power to stop you, and one wrong move from any of the 11 Penn State offensive players can ruin a play.
What’s the antidote?
“So what do elite quarterbacks do for football teams? Make plays that when they break down, or they’re tough to make for an average person or an average quarterback, instead of it being incomplete, they complete it,” Yurcich said.
The third-year Penn State play-caller was adamant that his group isn’t to that level yet. The coaching staff has so far, been unwilling to call Allar the starter openly. But when asked, Franklin described Allar’s play and skills with glowing terms.
“The thing that I think probably stood out to me the most is when he got in the Purdue game as a true freshman he just was like super poised,” Franklin said.
“There can be chaos all around him, and he just is efficient with his movement.”
When and whether the Penn State quarterbacks get there will go a long way to determining how many games Penn State wins in 2023.
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