How Penn State’s offense rallied and stayed together after a coaching change

ATLANTA — The morning of Nov. 12 was a busy one at the Penn State football facility. It was the day after a 24-15 loss to Michigan, and there would be a postmortem on another defeat against the elite of the Big Ten — and, in the big picture, living with the reality that another season would end without a playoff appearance. The math was certain, the fallout not yet clear.

The day quickly turned into something not seen during James Franklin’s 10 seasons in Happy Valley. For the first time in his tenure, Franklin fired a coach during the season, relieving offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich of his duties the day after Yurcich’s offense mustered just 238 yards and failed to score a second touchdown until the game was out of reach.

There are always meetings the day after a game, but there were more on this day, and with different tones. For one of the first, Franklin called the quarterbacks into his office to inform them of the coaching change, since Yurcich also was their position coach.

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Sophomore quarterback Drew Allar took the news hard. Yurcich recruited him to Penn State from Ohio, the land of Buckeyes, and Allar said he had fun playing under Yurcich. How could a top-rated quarterback like Allar not take it personally? The offensive coordinator is one part of the puzzle, perhaps the biggest, but a coach being fired also can be seen as a reflection of the quarterback. Allar said he struggled with that part of it in the immediate aftermath.

It was one of the other meetings on that Sunday, however, that helped Allar see the bigger picture.

The offensive coordinator normally would lead the day-after offensive meeting, but Yurcich was gone. So co-coordinators Ty Howle and Ja’Juan Seider led the group. So did team leaders like co-captain Theo Johnson, a fourth-year tight end who was among a group of players who spoke up during the meeting.

“He just said at the end of the day we could come together or fall apart,” Allar said of Johnson’s message.

“It’s tough losing a game like that and so much change happening so quick,” Johnson said Wednesday in Atlanta, where No. 10 Penn State continued its preparation ahead of Saturday’s Peach Bowl vs. No. 11 Ole Miss. “The big thing is staying together and not losing the team. It’s very easy to let things snowball and spiral and kind of lose that closeness that helps us play at a high level. I think that meeting was just kind of rallying the troops and making sure guys weren’t getting negative or getting in a bad place.”

Getting to a bad place wouldn’t be that hard. The nation’s top defense was held back by an offensive attack that wasn’t potent enough against the conference’s best teams to compete for a College Football Playoff appearance ... again.

Howle and Seider presented a unified front, but they knew they had a challenge.

“Any time there’s adversity, there’s internal ... not necessarily struggle, but there can be division,” Howle said.

The two coaches prepared their messaging in the hours leading up to the meeting. They’ve worked together for four years on Franklin’s staff and live a few doors away from each other. They also think football the same way, Howle said, so the transition in the weeks since Yurcich’s departure hasn’t been too difficult.

“You come in on a Sunday after a tough game, trying to pick those guys back up and make sure their heads are held high,” Howle said. “At the end of the day, the next team you play doesn’t care about last week. You have to learn and grow from it, and you have to prepare for your next opponent.”

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Up next was Rutgers, which Penn State dispatched in a relatively easy 27-6 win behind a strong running attack. Then came an explosion for 586 yards of offense — seventh-best in the Franklin era — in a 42-0 rout of Michigan State.

Howle and Seider have, over the last month, preached the same motto: simplicity equals speed.

It means?

“We don’t want these guys thinking,” Seider said. “We want them to go play.”

Said Johnson: “If you’re trying to think about too many things at once, you’re not going to play as fast as you’re capable of.”

While new offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki was hired three weeks after Yurcich’s firing, it has mostly been Howle and Seider leading the offense in practice and meetings as the team prepares for Ole Miss. Allar said he likes the way it has gone.

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“They’ve done a great job with me just instilling the mindset of just go out and play your game,” he said. “Don’t try to put yourself in a box.

“They’ve definitely instilled that confidence in me — just to go out and let it rip. They’ve been calling the offense like that the last two weeks, and it’s been uplifting to the offense as a whole.”

The uplifting part all started on that busy Sunday morning.

“When we left the room,” Howle said, “[it was] ‘Hey, guys, we’re unified. We’re going to go win the rest of our games. We’re going to have fun. We’re going to put you guys in a position to be successful.’ ”

So far, so good. We’ll see how it looks Saturday against a more telling opponent.