8:35 - 1st Quarter
Rocco Becht lines up in the shotgun. Brings Andrew Rappleyea back to line up as a second RB to help in pass protection. Ball is snapped—primary target is James Peoples out of the backfield, but he is tripped by his own guy and falls down. Koby Howard is the second option, he ran a stop route but is double-covered. Ben Brahmer runs a deeper stop route and is double covered. Chase Sowell runs a fly route and is man-covered by one defender with another covering zone. The pass protection appears to break down and Becht looks for a lane to scramble, but there isn’t one.
Adversity. This is what Matt Campbell preached all off season. What do you do when things go wrong? And he promised, they will go wrong at some point.
This was that point. Everything went wrong on this play. So what did they do?
The offensive linemen and Andrew Rappleyea never gave up, they repositioned and took control to solidify the pocket again. Rocco Becht recognized that and reset his feet. Koby Howard knew his QB needed an outlet, so he snuck behind the two defensive players who were covering him and emerged into an opening. That wasn’t a route he ran in the second half of the play, it was improvisation. It was backyard football. Becht lasered it just out ahead of him so he could catch it in stride and from there, he took off for the end zone. Touchdown Penn State!
And this is what felt different about this team compared to last year. Read the first part again and ask yourself what would have happened when the play disintegrated like that?
I can think of two things, either the QB would underthrow it to Sowell on the fly route hoping for a pass interference, or he would scramble. But worse than that, the WRs had specific instructions and never deviated from them. If the play broke down, they’d stop. But not just them. If the RB fell down, he was done. If the linemen didn’t get their initial block, they’d never reset. There was clearly a script for everything and not much room for improvisation. Everything had to go right. It had to be perfect. No room for mistakes. In the past, if the play worked, we got yards. If it didn’t work, the play died. I say this at the risk of making this another pissing match about the new vs the old guy, which I don’t want to do—but I think THIS play showed us a lot of what we’ve been missing in all of our games, especially the big ones. Let’s hope we see a lot more of this down the road. Especially in big games.
Rocco Becht lines up in the shotgun. Brings Andrew Rappleyea back to line up as a second RB to help in pass protection. Ball is snapped—primary target is James Peoples out of the backfield, but he is tripped by his own guy and falls down. Koby Howard is the second option, he ran a stop route but is double-covered. Ben Brahmer runs a deeper stop route and is double covered. Chase Sowell runs a fly route and is man-covered by one defender with another covering zone. The pass protection appears to break down and Becht looks for a lane to scramble, but there isn’t one.
Adversity. This is what Matt Campbell preached all off season. What do you do when things go wrong? And he promised, they will go wrong at some point.
This was that point. Everything went wrong on this play. So what did they do?
The offensive linemen and Andrew Rappleyea never gave up, they repositioned and took control to solidify the pocket again. Rocco Becht recognized that and reset his feet. Koby Howard knew his QB needed an outlet, so he snuck behind the two defensive players who were covering him and emerged into an opening. That wasn’t a route he ran in the second half of the play, it was improvisation. It was backyard football. Becht lasered it just out ahead of him so he could catch it in stride and from there, he took off for the end zone. Touchdown Penn State!
And this is what felt different about this team compared to last year. Read the first part again and ask yourself what would have happened when the play disintegrated like that?
I can think of two things, either the QB would underthrow it to Sowell on the fly route hoping for a pass interference, or he would scramble. But worse than that, the WRs had specific instructions and never deviated from them. If the play broke down, they’d stop. But not just them. If the RB fell down, he was done. If the linemen didn’t get their initial block, they’d never reset. There was clearly a script for everything and not much room for improvisation. Everything had to go right. It had to be perfect. No room for mistakes. In the past, if the play worked, we got yards. If it didn’t work, the play died. I say this at the risk of making this another pissing match about the new vs the old guy, which I don’t want to do—but I think THIS play showed us a lot of what we’ve been missing in all of our games, especially the big ones. Let’s hope we see a lot more of this down the road. Especially in big games.
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