Michigan and Ohio State, who are both in the College Football Playoff, are at the pinnacle of college football. Penn State yearns to be there as well.
Penn State’s first-year defensive coordinator, Manny Diaz, thinks the Nittany Lions are close to closing that gap, even though Penn State was 0-4 vs. those two Big Ten East rivals the past two seasons.
Diaz’s belief begins with Penn State’s players. “I don’t think they feel the proverbial gap is quite as big,” Diaz said on Friday.
Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford, who was 0-4 as a starter against Ohio State and 2-2 as a starter against Michigan, agrees. “We’re right there” with Michigan and Ohio State, Clifford said. “This team is hungry. The future’s very bright.”
When it comes to the 2022 regular season, Clifford and Diaz may be right: Penn State led Michigan in the third quarter and Ohio State in the fourth quarter, before falling 41-17 to the Wolverines and 44-31 to the Buckeyes.
Now, Michigan is 13-0 and ranked No. 2, and in the CFP for the second consecutive season. The Buckeyes are 11-1 and ranked No. 4, and in their fifth playoffs since they were started in 2014. “The great thing about being our league,” Diaz said, “is we’ve got a very, very high standard that we have to live up to.”
So, how far below is Penn State — 10-2, No. 11 in the CFP rankings and headed to the Rose Bowl to play Utah on Jan. 2 — from that standard? That’s the overarching question for James Franklin and the Penn State program after they bounced back from a desultory 11-11 stretch in 2020-21.
Penn State is 1-8 vs. Ohio State since Franklin arrived at Penn State in 2014. However, the Nittany Lions have had two one-point losses (2017, 2018) in that time, and save for a blowout loss in 2015, have lost by an average of just 7.8 points over the other seven defeats.
Meanwhile, Michigan has beaten Penn State twice over the past two seasons, and three times over their past five games.
How big is that gap? That’s the question I put it to Diaz on Friday at Penn State’s bowl media day at Beaver Stadium:
“Manny, you mentioned Michigan and Ohio State. You are in the unique position of having played two of the four teams in the playoffs. What does Penn State have to do to get in that position to be one of those four teams?”
“It’s a great question,” Diaz replied. “It feels like a broad question, like there’s these grandiose things that we have to do. And I don’t think the players from the locker room see it that way.”
Diaz heard the narrative after the Nittany Lions lost by 24 points vs. Michigan in October: “We stink, bury Penn State, whatever,” he recalled. He didn’t buy it, especially after he saw how things played out in November, when Penn State went 4-0 by a combined margin of 165 to 40 to earn its fourth regular season with double-digit victories under Franklin.
“Now, as a bit of time has gone through those games, I think we were learning,” Diaz said. “I think that’s what teams are allowed to do. You hear coach [Franklin] say it all the time — it doesn’t mean it’s not true — that losses can become lessons. I think we learned a lot from both of those games.”
Even though Diaz was not on the Penn State sidelines in 2021 when the ninth-ranked Wolverines escaped Beaver Stadium with a 21-17 victory over the 23rd-ranked Nittany Lions, he sees that narrow loss as an indicator of where Penn State really is compared to Michigan. After all, PSU led 17-14 in that game with less than four minutes to play.
“Just talking to the players here — you know, obviously, I was not here last fall — but if you look at where Michigan was when they walked out of State College in 2021,” Diaz said, “they were two teams that were probably mirror images of each other. Michigan’s belief in what happened here, then beating Ohio State (42-27) in Ann Arbor over a year ago and then how they’ve kicked on from that.”
Diaz’s point is well-taken. For a long stretch, Penn State and Michigan were on even footing. Franklin arrived at University Park under challenging conditions in 2014, Harbaugh arrived in Ann Arbor in 2015. From 2015-2020, their records were almost identical:
Franklin — 53-22 (.707) overall, 36-17 (.679) in the Big Ten, one Big Ten championship, 2-3 in bowl games.
Harbaugh — 49-22 (.690) overall, 36-17 (.679) in the Big Ten, one shared Big Ten East title, 1-4 in bowls.
Since then, after Harbaugh took a pay cut and Franklin got his third and fourth contracts in eight seasons, the Wolverines have been 25-2, with back-to-back CFP berths, while Penn State has been 17-8, with its bounce back 10-2 2022 season.
Diaz thinks Michigan’s 2021 victory over Penn State catapulted the Wolverines into the upper echelon. He may be right. Of course, back-to-back wins over Ohio State may have inspired even greater confidence for Harbaugh and his team.
“Oftentimes that’s just what it takes,” Diaz said. “It may just take a moment. Or a thing happens in the course of the game. That creates that belief. Belief is a very, very powerful thing. So, I think our players see that.”
Mike Yurcich has seen Ohio State’s success firsthand. Yurcich, close to completing his second season as the Nittany Lions’ offensive coordinator, was the passing game coordinator and quarterback coach at Ohio State in 2019. It was Ryan Day’s first full season as the Buckeyes’ head coach. Ohio State finished 13-1 after being ranked No. 2 in the CFP, before falling 29-23 to Clemson.
Yurcich, who was the OC/QB coach at Texas in 2020 before arriving at Penn State in 2021, saw up-close what it takes to make the playoffs. Which is why I asked him this question on Friday:
“Mike, you’re in a unique position where you recently worked for the head coach of a team that may be your biggest rival. What does Penn State have to do having lost to Ohio State and Michigan to get in their position as far as top four in the college playoffs?
“Yeah, that’s a great question,” was Yurcich’s reply. “I think what we need to do is make sure that we’re executing better and that we’re coaching better. I think all those things add up. I don’t think it’s one thing necessarily.
“That’s a very complex question that a lot of things factor into it. I think we need to continue to recruit at a championship level. It starts with that. But at the end of the day, we have to continue to take care of the ball and finish — and control what we can control.
“I think our guys are hungry. I don’t want to really look past this Rose Bowl and that sort of thing with this question. It’s difficult for me to answer at this time. But, you know, I think those things all add up. I don’t think it’s one thing and we’re going to continue to press on and drive that home.”
A KRAFTY RESPONSE
Penn State athletic director Patrick Kraft, who officially started on July 1, has been at Penn State even less time than Yurcich.
But Kraft also knows his football. He played linebacker at Indiana in the Big Ten, and was AD at both Temple and Boston College. He has great hopes for Franklin and Penn State football. Kraft wants to remove any roadblocks to beating Ohio State and Michigan – and everybody else.
Kraft is ready to put his money where his mouth is. (Kraft literally said that on Friday.)
“I want to make sure that [Franklin] has every resource available to go win a national championship,” Kraft said. “[It’s] why I’m so happy that we’re going to play in the Rose Bowl, why I know we’re going to be elite and why we’re going to win a national championship — because I believe he does everything the right way with those young men. That’s what it’s really about.”
