{"id":64096,"date":"2024-09-12T11:00:33","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T15:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=64096"},"modified":"2024-09-11T19:18:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T23:18:40","slug":"penn-state-bye-week-update-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2024\/09\/12\/penn-state-bye-week-update-offense\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn State Bye Week Update: Offense"},"content":{"rendered":"

The eighth-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions enter their first bye week of 2024 with a record of two wins and no losses.\u00a0 <\/span>Their two victories have come against a Power Five opponent in West Virginia, and a MAC team in Bowling Green.\u00a0 <\/span>While the West Virginia game was a statement victory<\/a>, the Bowling Green win was too close for comfort<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>In this first Penn State Bye Week update, the focus is on the offense.<\/p>\n

Head coach James Franklin and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki should be happy overall with the performance of the offense so far.\u00a0 <\/span>The players that came in with big expectations, such as quarterback Drew Allar<\/a> and Penn State\u2019s running back tandem<\/a>, have performed as expected.\u00a0 <\/span>The wide receiver position was the question mark<\/a> coming into the season, and that question remains entering the first bye week.<\/p>\n

Penn State Offensive Rankings<\/h3>\n

Total Offense: <\/strong>At 447.5 yards per game, Penn State is ranked #44 in the nation<\/p>\n

Yards Per Play: <\/strong>7.65 yards per play, #18<\/p>\n

Rushing Offense:\u00a0<\/strong>228 yards per game, #25<\/p>\n

Yards Per Rush: <\/strong>5.77 yards per rush, #31<\/p>\n

Passing Offense:\u00a0<\/strong>219.5 yards per game, #76<\/p>\n

Yards Per Completion: <\/strong>17.56 yards per completion, #10<\/p>\n

Kotelnicki Effect: Big Increase in Big Plays<\/h3>\n

With the addition of Kotelnicki in the offseason, the expectation was that the number of big plays would significantly increase.\u00a0 <\/span>So far, so good.\u00a0 <\/span>In 2023, Penn State had five passing plays of 50+ yards in total.\u00a0 <\/span>They have two already this season, both achieved in the first half of the first game.\u00a0 <\/span>When looking at plays of 20+ yards, either passing or rushing, Penn State had 47 such plays last season.\u00a0 <\/span>That comes to an average of 3.6 per game.\u00a0 <\/span>Through the first two games of 2024, the Nittany Lions have 14 such plays, for an average of seven per game.<\/p>\n

Penn State Rushing Offense<\/h3>\n

Not surprisingly, Penn State\u2019s opponents have seen a healthy dose of the Nittany Lions running game.\u00a0 <\/span>Coming into this season, the running back room was one of the strengths of the team.\u00a0 <\/span>They have not disappointed.<\/p>\n

In the first game, against West Virginia, Nick Singleton<\/a> had the bigger stat day, rushing for 114 yards on 13 carries with a touchdown.\u00a0 <\/span>He had two runs of 40 yards each.\u00a0 <\/span>Kaytron Allen amassed 10 rushes, producing 20 yards.\u00a0 <\/span>After reviewing the game, Franklin reiterated his confidence in Allen, saying simply, \u201cStats can be deceiving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fast forward to the Bowling Green game, and the carries were roughly evenly split again.\u00a0 <\/span>Singleton led again, with 119 yards on 13 carries with a touchdown.\u00a0 <\/span>Allen went for 101 yards on 14 carries.\u00a0 <\/span>While he was kept out of the end zone, Allen did have a more obvious impact on the game.<\/p>\n

The quarterbacks<\/a> have also contributed to the Penn State rushing attack.\u00a0 <\/span>Through the first two games, Allar has 13 carries for 51 yards and a touchdown.\u00a0 <\/span>In the West Virginia game, he set his career high for rushing yards in a game with 44.\u00a0 <\/span>Allar has shown a propensity to get some yards on the ground when needed.\u00a0 <\/span>As expected, backup Beau Pribula<\/a> has also seen some snaps in Kotelnicki\u2019s offense.\u00a0 <\/span>More of a dual-threat quarterback than Allar is, he has carried the ball five times this season for 37 yards.<\/p>\n

Penn State Passing Offense<\/h3>\n

Kotelnicki\u2019s offense with Kansas used the running game to open up long passing plays.\u00a0 <\/span>With that being the expectation for Penn State this year, the rushing side has produced, and the long pass game has shown flashes.\u00a0 <\/span>Coming into the season, the wide receiver position was the biggest question mark on offense.\u00a0 <\/span>Despite the big plays in the passing game, those questions persist.<\/p>\n

Allar\u2019s statistics are very good through two weeks, as he gets more acclimated in his second year as the starting quarterback.\u00a0 <\/span>Through two games, he has completed 24 of 37 passes for 420 yards with five touchdowns and one interception.\u00a0 <\/span>The 64.9% completion percentage and 11.4 yards per attempt are significantly ahead of last year\u2019s 59.9% completion percentage and 6.8 yards per attempt.<\/p>\n

In the West Virginia game, Allar appeared to build a solid rapport with Trey Wallace<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>Wallace had the first four catches of the season for Penn State and finished the game with five catches for 117 yards and two touchdowns.\u00a0 <\/span>Those remain his stats after the second game too, as he was held without a catch by Bowling Green.\u00a0 <\/span>Omari Evans has also stepped up as a deep threat, delivering\u00a0<\/span>four catches for 89 yards and a touchdown through the first two games.<\/p>\n

Covering for the lack of wide receiver production, particularly against Bowling Green, was tight end Tyler Warren<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>Through two games, Warren has 11 catches for 176 yards and a touchdown.\u00a0 <\/span>He made the position a strength<\/a> coming into the season, and showed his complete arsenal against Bowling Green (where he set the school record for receiving yards by a tight end in a game), getting open at will, gaining yards after the catch, and solidly blocking.\u00a0 <\/span>Additionally, the running backs have chipped in, providing an outlet for Allar.\u00a0 <\/span>Allen had a touchdown reception in the West Virginia game, and Singleton had one against Bowling Green.<\/p>\n

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Photo Credit: Matthew O’Haren-USA TODAY Sports<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The eighth-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions enter their first bye week of 2024 with a record of two wins and no losses.\u00a0 Their two victories have come against a Power Five opponent in West Virginia, and a MAC team in Bowling Green.\u00a0 While the West Virginia game was a statement victory, the Bowling Green win […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5172,"featured_media":64116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2],"tags":[32817,7983,3446,5250,8490,837,8762,8764,309,7524,8852],"class_list":["post-64096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bigten","category-featured","tag-andy-kotelnicki","tag-big-ten-football","tag-bowling-green-falcons","tag-bye-week","tag-drew-allar","tag-james-franklin","tag-kaytron-allen","tag-omari-evans","tag-penn-state-nittany-lions","tag-penn-state-quarterbacks","tag-penn-state-running-backs"],"modified_by":"Kate Pearson Halyburton, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}