We're doing all of our spring/summer interviews for the summer preseason magazine that Blue White Illustrated produces every July. Last week, that meant a zoom sit-down with James Franklin, and it has also included interview opportunities for our staff with guys like Jaquan Brisker, Tariq Castro-Fields, Rasheed Walker, and others.
Today, I had an interview with Penn State's new offensive coordinator, Mike Yurcich. I've spoken to Mike via the group press conferences in which he's been made available since he was brought onto the staff in January, but, to my recollection, that was actually only one or two opportunities.
In any case...
There will be plenty of time for stories from the interview in the next couple of weeks, of which I anticipate there being plenty to relay (and more than will fit into just one story), but for the time being, I thought I could maybe a little more informally pass along some of the items that emerged through our 20 minute conversation.
1) Mike is a very, very interesting guy. Let's call him "unique," in fact, which is exactly the vibe I had prepared to interact with given some of the impressions I'd been given and picked up since his arrival.
I'm not sure if I've had many more interviews through my career of guys who are more dialed in on the Xs and Os of the game than Mike was this afternoon. None of that is to say he gave away a scripted blueprint of how and what the Nittany Lions are going to look like offensively this fall - he did not - but the intensity and purely black and white approach to the game of football that others have described of him matched pretty perfectly with his demeanor in the interview.
He's talkative without saying anything specific, but his fire for the game is really readily apparent in everything he says and how he says it.
2) Just as was the case when he was initially hired, and again in the spring, Yurcich doesn't offer anything in the way of public assessments of his players or their abilities on an individual level. He shied away from talking about Sean Clifford in an evaluative sense when he first took the job, saying then that he wanted to see more before he really felt like he could offer much in the way of a fair assessment of where the quarterback stands.
Well, while Yurcich was happy to describe the effort Clifford gives, calling his intensity "very, very good" and "very high," he also did shy away from offering anything substantive in the way of what specifically Clifford needs to work on. Some might see that as a deflection to avoid talking about how far - or not - Clifford has come in the six months since Yurcich's arrival, but the reality today is that Yurcich took the same approach when assessing the running backs, receivers, offensive line, and tight ends as groups, choosing always to avoid individual citation in favor of collective, group-based impressions.
Sean Clifford: "He's a high energy guy. He loves it. His 'want to' is super good. He wants to be an excellent quarterback and it's very important to him. It's right there."
Receivers: "I think we need some game reps before I get into all of the the evaluations of everybody. I like our group, I like our mindset, I think we have a bunch of hard workers. There's some talent there, and there's a lot of room to improve."
Running Backs: "We have a deep group, we know that. How much c an they push one another, and who's going to emerge, we're excited to see that happen. We need some guys to be able to stand out. Anytime our offense has been successful, it's because we've had a tremendous running game. That starts up front, and that starts with that tailback being able to make the first guy miss, or two guys miss... We gotta find that guy and let that competition go against one another and find out who rises and who is able to emerge from that."
Tight End: "Tight end, to me, is a very, very unique position and one that can be utilized very well... the more unique they are in their skill sets, those give you different opportunities to take advantage of those as long as those parallel one another."
Offensive Line: "We're gonna be tough and we're gonna be physical and we're gonna run the football. There's no question about it. Upfront, at Penn State, we're always going to have a physical offensive line. We're always going to have a talented offensive line. We don't see that changing. That's who we are, it's what we've been, and we're going to continue to do that. To me, that really doesn't factor in like, what if we're not... what does that mean? We're gonna be. That's our mindset, positive attitude, our core value number one. And so our positive attitude and who we are and what we're going to be is, we're going to be a very strong, tough, physical, athletic, overwhelming offensive line."
3) One of the things that emerged in my interview with Clifford that also popped back up today when talking to Yurcich is what his approach was to spring practice with the installation of the offense, and how that is going to carry through to preseason practice.
Bottom line, he flooded these guys with information and all of the foundational elements of what he wants to do, and it was of an extremely wide breadth. He didn't leave anything out, and went full-go on situations and pairing philosophy against defensive looks, all through the first nine practices of the spring so that it could be refined a little more in practices 10-15.
"I believe in, you always want to teach the offense when you get in so they're going to naturally be overwhelmed at first. There's gonna be a lot of mistakes, but then like in the spring practice 10 through 15, you really want to maximize those practices so you kind of just scale it back then and try to really get some rhythm and get some execution done so you have some confidence," Yurcich said. "But you still over the summer months want to be able to get into your cut-ups and have enough taught to where you feel good about rolling into your third down, medium, long, extra long, your red zones, your score zones. How are we going to attack cover zero, how are we gonna attack cover one, how are we going to attack two-man, how are we going to attack bear? You want to have all those categories covered.
"You may have not covered it A through Z, but at least you have something to introduce it over the summers, teach it from, have concepts, coached up to where your guys have a baseline. And it may not have been expert level, but at least you can go back through it and review stuff, and then help yourself in fall camp."
The same concept then applies to preseason camp, where he'll scale things back at the midpoint as the season approaches. Because, as he stressed, in season you really only get two practices a week - Tuesday and Wednesday - to truly install and run through what you want to do on a weekly basis, so you better have a strong foundation to draw from when that time arrives.
***************
I'll definitely have much more from the Yurcich interview moving forward, but I wanted to at least pass along some of those initial impressions that jumped out to me regarding his philosophy and approach since he's joined the program.
Today, I had an interview with Penn State's new offensive coordinator, Mike Yurcich. I've spoken to Mike via the group press conferences in which he's been made available since he was brought onto the staff in January, but, to my recollection, that was actually only one or two opportunities.
In any case...
There will be plenty of time for stories from the interview in the next couple of weeks, of which I anticipate there being plenty to relay (and more than will fit into just one story), but for the time being, I thought I could maybe a little more informally pass along some of the items that emerged through our 20 minute conversation.
1) Mike is a very, very interesting guy. Let's call him "unique," in fact, which is exactly the vibe I had prepared to interact with given some of the impressions I'd been given and picked up since his arrival.
I'm not sure if I've had many more interviews through my career of guys who are more dialed in on the Xs and Os of the game than Mike was this afternoon. None of that is to say he gave away a scripted blueprint of how and what the Nittany Lions are going to look like offensively this fall - he did not - but the intensity and purely black and white approach to the game of football that others have described of him matched pretty perfectly with his demeanor in the interview.
He's talkative without saying anything specific, but his fire for the game is really readily apparent in everything he says and how he says it.
2) Just as was the case when he was initially hired, and again in the spring, Yurcich doesn't offer anything in the way of public assessments of his players or their abilities on an individual level. He shied away from talking about Sean Clifford in an evaluative sense when he first took the job, saying then that he wanted to see more before he really felt like he could offer much in the way of a fair assessment of where the quarterback stands.
Well, while Yurcich was happy to describe the effort Clifford gives, calling his intensity "very, very good" and "very high," he also did shy away from offering anything substantive in the way of what specifically Clifford needs to work on. Some might see that as a deflection to avoid talking about how far - or not - Clifford has come in the six months since Yurcich's arrival, but the reality today is that Yurcich took the same approach when assessing the running backs, receivers, offensive line, and tight ends as groups, choosing always to avoid individual citation in favor of collective, group-based impressions.
Sean Clifford: "He's a high energy guy. He loves it. His 'want to' is super good. He wants to be an excellent quarterback and it's very important to him. It's right there."
Receivers: "I think we need some game reps before I get into all of the the evaluations of everybody. I like our group, I like our mindset, I think we have a bunch of hard workers. There's some talent there, and there's a lot of room to improve."
Running Backs: "We have a deep group, we know that. How much c an they push one another, and who's going to emerge, we're excited to see that happen. We need some guys to be able to stand out. Anytime our offense has been successful, it's because we've had a tremendous running game. That starts up front, and that starts with that tailback being able to make the first guy miss, or two guys miss... We gotta find that guy and let that competition go against one another and find out who rises and who is able to emerge from that."
Tight End: "Tight end, to me, is a very, very unique position and one that can be utilized very well... the more unique they are in their skill sets, those give you different opportunities to take advantage of those as long as those parallel one another."
Offensive Line: "We're gonna be tough and we're gonna be physical and we're gonna run the football. There's no question about it. Upfront, at Penn State, we're always going to have a physical offensive line. We're always going to have a talented offensive line. We don't see that changing. That's who we are, it's what we've been, and we're going to continue to do that. To me, that really doesn't factor in like, what if we're not... what does that mean? We're gonna be. That's our mindset, positive attitude, our core value number one. And so our positive attitude and who we are and what we're going to be is, we're going to be a very strong, tough, physical, athletic, overwhelming offensive line."
3) One of the things that emerged in my interview with Clifford that also popped back up today when talking to Yurcich is what his approach was to spring practice with the installation of the offense, and how that is going to carry through to preseason practice.
Bottom line, he flooded these guys with information and all of the foundational elements of what he wants to do, and it was of an extremely wide breadth. He didn't leave anything out, and went full-go on situations and pairing philosophy against defensive looks, all through the first nine practices of the spring so that it could be refined a little more in practices 10-15.
"I believe in, you always want to teach the offense when you get in so they're going to naturally be overwhelmed at first. There's gonna be a lot of mistakes, but then like in the spring practice 10 through 15, you really want to maximize those practices so you kind of just scale it back then and try to really get some rhythm and get some execution done so you have some confidence," Yurcich said. "But you still over the summer months want to be able to get into your cut-ups and have enough taught to where you feel good about rolling into your third down, medium, long, extra long, your red zones, your score zones. How are we going to attack cover zero, how are we gonna attack cover one, how are we going to attack two-man, how are we going to attack bear? You want to have all those categories covered.
"You may have not covered it A through Z, but at least you have something to introduce it over the summers, teach it from, have concepts, coached up to where your guys have a baseline. And it may not have been expert level, but at least you can go back through it and review stuff, and then help yourself in fall camp."
The same concept then applies to preseason camp, where he'll scale things back at the midpoint as the season approaches. Because, as he stressed, in season you really only get two practices a week - Tuesday and Wednesday - to truly install and run through what you want to do on a weekly basis, so you better have a strong foundation to draw from when that time arrives.
***************
I'll definitely have much more from the Yurcich interview moving forward, but I wanted to at least pass along some of those initial impressions that jumped out to me regarding his philosophy and approach since he's joined the program.
