Agree, Cliff is fine and is capable of bringing a BIG championship to Penn State. Cliff sucked in the first 5 games because of several factors. The primary reason for his poor play at the start IMHO is that he was too confident in his ability. Mahomes he is not. He tried too often to make plays that he is incapable of making based on his talent and/or plays that simply weren't their. Consequently a turnover. He believed he was better than he was. Had he not made the turnovers they have a good chance to win every one of those games except OSU. The other reasons were a new OC in a pandemic year and too many inexperienced skill players. You can't open the playbook when your best RBs are true freshman and 2 of the 3 WRs are true freshmen. I get he doesn't have the "it" factor that raises the talent of everyone around him. I get he doesn't have great pocket awareness or knows when to unload the ball before he takes a senseless sack. With the development of the aforementioned freshman skill players, the emergence of the 2 freshman TEs and hopefully an improved OL the offense should be capable of scoring enough points to keep them in every game on their schedule. I'm more concerned about the DE's and LBs than I am about Cliff.
Lance Dixon (hopefully false rumor)
- Thread starter PSU2UNC
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You may be correct about this, although I see it (perhaps the other side of the same coin) as that he saw that it was "up to him to win games" because he lost his top three RB and top WR from the year before. So he was forcing things in a way he didn't the year before, and then once things started going south it affected his confidence and things spiraled from there.
IMHO, after the complete stench of the 2020 season wore off...my view about this whole season changed. I do believe it was a total abberition...everything...I mean everything about 2020 has sucked ballsack and I for one could not imagine what it was like to have to play football the way these kids did this year.
That said, I just think people need to step back and relax with Clifford...I believe he is more like the qb we saw that took PSU to the Cotton bowl. Is he Trace? No, is he an elite level qb? no, Can he win at the college level? yes.
I don't think he's the game changing qb to get psu to the playoffs but I don't think he's as bad as he was last season and we're basically stuck with him next year so....
Clifford's biggest problem was his inability to control his emotions and adrenaline - look at how many overthrows (and by a big factor) during the first half of season - it did get somewhat better after he was benched (and to his credit, it was reported that Clifford handled his benching in a very mature and respected fashion). However, there is something in Clifford's mechanics that is adversely affected by adrenaline. In any event, the assumption that CJF had all these better options is not necessarily true as reults during Clifford's benching and then the results after his return to starting in 2nd half of the season proved.
Let's not forget that the season was severely adversely affected by a complete screw-job by the B1G Officiating (especially the review booth). Even Herbie said that the Review Booth's decision to let the call stand was absurd given what the replay conclusively shows (the ball hitting the ground PRIOR to hitting the FRONT of the pylon, the part of the pylon that Mark's the goal-line!).
Clifford will not bring us a B10 championship unless Yurcich magically transforms him. Just don't see it but I hope I am wrong. It all starts st the QB position and he is not close to elite. Wr need an elite QB to win theB10 championship. A game m.j anager who does not make mistakes will
WHY are we discussing Sean Clifford, Kirk Ciarrocca, and Mike Yurcich in a Lance Dixon wants to transfer rumor thread? Is the offense telling Dixon to transfer?
Okay, so let's stop ignoring the elephant in the room. Let's go ahead and define the term "Elite" as it applies to a QB. What makes a QB Elite specifically? Is it high completion percentage? Limiting turnovers? TDs a game? Rush yards a game? Are good QB's capable of elite games? Trevor Lawrence didn't look elite to me against OSU? Do they have elite coordinators and gameplans that maximize their skills? Do they have Elite O-Linemen in front of them and Elite time to throw the ball? Do they have receivers that drop the ball, or elite receivers? Coupled with Elite Running games? My point is this all so freaking subjective. The Alabama QB is not considered ELITE by just about anyone, but Alabama has elite players and elite coaches around him. Now that we have identified some real talent in our receiving room(for the first time in what seems like forever) and our line started to block well towards the end of the year, we have really good TE's too and hopefully the running game is healthy and effective next year, can clifford win big games? Can a really good OC craft gameplans that get guys open and work with clifford on his mechanics? Can Clifford be a 65% completion guy? WOuld that be ELITE? Last 4 games of the season Clifford was a tick over 65% completion percentage with 5 TD's and 1 interception. We didn't play world beaters, but this is very strong QB play, couple in 2 rushing TDs.
He is good enough to beat OSU, but our coaches, our linemen, our RB's, our receivers, our defense, and our special teams have to be too. If the point you are making is that the QB has to be subjectively elite to win that game, nobody would argue Lawerence, who is about to be the 1st overall pick, was good enough to beat OSU on his own, neither is clifford.
l’m not sure we, or the team and coaches, are stuck with Clifford.
Franklin is paid to win games, and he has shown that he knows how to win games. So I expect him to put a QB on the field that can win games in Franklin’s system, which is now MY’s system. Clifford has already started for 2 years and still has obvious weaknesses such as throwing high and failing to throw the ball away to avoid drive killing sacks. So I expect Franklin to seek a better QB to replace Clifford if he can develop one he has or sees one available in the Portal.
Because we’re afraid to clutter the board up with PSU football threads when the off season focus seems to be women, weather, other sports and dead people??
Well we are sporting a second Dixon in the portal thread, but looks like he wants to say adios.
247sports.com
Former blue-chip LB Lance Dixon enters transfer portal
Penn State linebacker Lance Dixon, a former blue-chip recruit, enters the portal.
247sports.com
And another PSU rumor comes to fruitionWell we are sporting another Dixon in the portal thread, but looks like he wants to say adios.
Former blue-chip LB Lance Dixon enters transfer portal
Penn State linebacker Lance Dixon, a former blue-chip recruit, enters the portal.
Came in as a 5 star, but is exiting by the back door as a 3 star. And that's being kind.
Looking forward to seeing Elsdon and Fisher, and any other LB that can actually tackle, on the field.
Doesn't seem like he's physical enough or aggressive enough to take on guys bigger than him. I don't know how he'll manage at Michigan either unless they move them back to safety. Seems to me that he should be one of those Bandit type linebackers as part of a 335 defensive scheme
Maybe a swap for this 2022 kid...
You make good points that a QB needs the talent and coaching around him to help him perform at an elite level. By the way, I don't know exactly what is elite but it ain't Clifford.
The way I look at is this; yes we can beat O$U in Columbus if Clifford is a solid game manager and all other aspects of the team perform well AND O$U is off their game a bit. However, if the defense slips up or the O-Line has some issues (not horrible but some bad plays/series), etc do we have a QB who can overcome that? I define that as putting the team on his shoulders like a superstar does and win a game for us in crunch time when not everything is clicking the whole game. That could be a game winning drive, grinding out a drive or keeping one alive which can be comprised of accurate throws to well covered receivers, able to avoid a rush and make good decisions and generally be a calm, cool, collected field leader. That is not Clifford and I want that guy like we all do to take PSU to the promised land.
I think with this new coordinator, and hopefully a normal season, Clifford will have a heck of a year.
Mike Farrell is reporting that Lance Dixon is down to Michigan State, West Virginia, TCU, and Temple as his transfer destination. Rumor is that a number of his credits are not transferring to Michigan, which must suck for him since it seemed that going to Michigan was the main reason why he entered the transfer portal in the first place (high school coach and friends at Michigan).
If true, that doesn’t seem like a good look for what kids can take for credit at PSU ...
Could also possibly be a minimum grade in the class to transfer the credits, or the credits did not apply to his major.
Michigan claims to be the Harvard of the Midwest. They only accept a certain pedigree.
This or his school/major has restrictions on how many classes can transfer for credit.
He should just stick it out at PSU and get better.
Honestly, if he was actually that good, his plan B schools wouldn't be what they are. There are some schools in the $EC that would make it simple to transfer credits that couldn't be transferred from one BIG school to another.
He looked absolutely lost at times last season, and his size makes him the dreaded "tweener." Raw athletic ability? Sure, but it kind of seems like he was a bit overrated by some experts out there.
He looked absolutely lost at times last season, and his size makes him the dreaded "tweener." Raw athletic ability? Sure, but it kind of seems like he was a bit overrated by some experts out there.
Actually, I could almost guarantee you that 99% of UG classes at PSU would find a close equivalency at Michigan. That’s the way it works in higher education.
I would spend around five hours a month on approving transfer equivalencies and there isn’t all that much variation out there.
There might be issues in transferring from a small school to a big one, but not from PSU to UM.
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Agree with one major caveat: many schools will not grant transfer credit for courses taken online at the original institution.
Interesting about the credits. I assume he was majoring in something at PSU that Michigan does not offer. Otherwise I cannot imagine why the credits wouldn't transfer between Big 10 schools.
I guess my point was more about school to school differences, not major to major differences. I’d assume there were more credits transferring to those other schools than to UM as well. Yeah, I guess he could have applied to different majors at each school, accounting for the difference ...
Didn't we end up with Anthony Fera because he couldn't get in (or didn't want to test for) to Michigan's business school?
I think it's not arguable that Michigan is a better institution than Penn State. And I don't think it's very close.
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