Offensive Line Will Determine Penn State's Fate in 2010

that hunched over and grabbing at air isnt a bonafide pass blocking scheme?

Penn State has often been live and die by the O-line.

On another note, the tackles seemed to better grasp (pun intended) the outside speed rush in in the Blue White game. Just hold the sh*t out of them because Big Ten refs only call holding in the inside.

I’m PSU’s opponent and I’m gonna stack the box and make K Newsome throw the ball. Great RBs and scrambling QBs don’t succeed much when this happens. What are we gonna do, I’m freakin’ OUT!!!

Even though I’m short on it, is that everyone outside our circle said Clark would be a crap QB, a guy with no talent and no potential beyond running — and now those same people say we’re screwed w/out him b/c we have another guy who’s got very limited potential beyond running. It is easier to tune out the reports if I remember those same people thought Clark was no good.

Take away special teams and the 2009 team was really close to going undefeated despite all of their flaws on the o-line. The lack of a short field on the offensive and defensive side of ST, plus punting and kicking killed this team in close games.

Special teams was dominant from 2005 to 2008. Not coincidentally, that was the same time we had Derrick Williams. I really want to see positive results on special teams.

I don’t buy the whole sky is falling BS analysis that a lot of the so called experts are making. This is not going to be the same Penn State team we have seen the last two years under the direction of Clark. We will (or at least should be) run heavy and I am absolutely fine with that. The stable of horses is absolutely sick when you think of it…….Royster, Green, Dukes, Suhey, Redd, Newsome and The Drake and Smith (from the WR positions). I think the line is key but the Spread actually will allow the coaches to hide problems with the line, which would be more evident in a more conventional offense. People can talk about stacking the box but you can’t really do that in a Spread scheme as you have to account for the WR’s. All we need K-New to do is complete 10-12 passes a game and I think the running game and D will take care of the rest. Actually very optomistic for this season!

Bold prediction, but I like it.

and it’s magnified for this psu team, given the status of the qb and the strength in the rest of the skill players.

I really want Wiz to play guard; I feel like we have the best guard in the country (arguably) and need to let him play his natural position unless it just completely wrecks the rest of the unit.

At this point, I take our defensive performance as a given; Scrap’s gonna make his unit a top-ten in the nation most years. So it all comes down to offense, and specifically o-line and qb. And you’re right that the coaches are going to limit the qb to what the o-line allows him to do.

We can be a pretty good offensive team if we take a page from OSU’s game plan against us in 2009. Think about what Sweaterveset and Cryor did to us…

-Run the ball really well
-Scramble on 3rd down to keep the chains moving
-Take advantage of blown coverage and hit the wide open guy

They made it look methodical…come to think of it, our 2005 offense was pretty much the same deal. Good…not stellar passing game….coupled with an outstanding rush attack.

if I don’t put much stock in the opinion of a writer who thinks our Defensive Coordinator’s name is “Mark Bradley.”

I agree that the O line is a bigger deal than QB this year. The talent at QB is ample, and the wealth of both talent and experience at WR and RB should help the new starter come along quickly. But, there are still a few weak spots on the OL, and that can be enough to screw the pooch.

The OL will be better this year, and Wiz should be able to anchor a pretty good push on his side. I just hope the right side of the line can hold up, particularly on passing downs.

And Brian’s missing a few pieces in that Sporting Blog piece. This situation is completely different than 2004-2005. Back then, we were coming off a 3-9 season, but somehow convinced Justin King and Derrick Williams to COME TO PENN STAAAAAAAATE. Joe was very involved with those recruitments, including writing Derrick Williams letters practically every day and telling him that he’d be the missing piece to a national championship caliber program. Joe’s not doing that stuff now. So yeah, there were people saying, “HAHA FIGUREHEAD ZOMBIE COACH”, but Joe was still pretty involved in a lot. Now? Not so much, it seems.

It’s one thing to have a figurehead coach who delegates nearly everything to the assistants. There’s stability to be found in such a structure, despite its other weaknesses. Now, the figurehead himself looks increasingly distant and fragile, and that works its way through the rest of the organization. Before, PSU could respond with, “Whatevs, look at Joe, he’s still vibrant and angry and charming.” Now, it’s like trying to catch a glimpse at Castro. So this isn’t just looking at a commit list and saying “oh crap, Joe must be old.” There are real, obvious concerns to digest here.

And it’s not one coach that isn’t recruiting. It’s more like three, and as was pointed out over at FOS this morning, the coaches who do most of our heavy lifting in recruiting (Bradley, LJ, Vanderlinden, et al.) don’t have a lot of our big targets in their designated recruiting territories. Dick Anderson is our main recruiter for New Jersey. Lots of people think that’s why we’re losing those NJ recruits to Pitt. And now Shawn Oakman is supposedly leaning toward Pitt, as well. That really isn’t good.

One more thing. Penn State is likely to struggle this year, given the inexperience at QB and horrific road schedule. But I don’t think we’ll be bad. And next year, the team should be quite good, with no real effects from not landing a stellar recruiting class this offseason (those kids would be freshmen, anyway, so who cares?). The issue is whether a bad recruiting class will hurt the next coach 2-4 years from now. Yeah, it’s a small class, but in an age of 85 scholarships, nobody can really afford to have a bad class.

I’m hoping it’s not wrong to count on Troutman, that he won’t try JoePa’s patience this summer. Please, please, Johnny, come to camp at acceptable weight and academic standing!

What are y’all’s real guesses at Center? Would love some more Olineup speculation from peeps.