STATE COLLEGE — Sean Clifford might be returning to Penn State for his sixth college season, but it marks just the second time in his career that he’ll be working with the same offensive coordinator for the second year in a row. In Clifford’s first three years as a starter, he had three different voices calling plays for him.
In his final college season, though, Clifford and Mike Yurcich are together again, and there’s a hope that the continuity on the coaching staff around Clifford can be something that helps elevate both the quarterback and the offense.
“I think the biggest thing from Year 1 to Year 2 and it’s only been through, what, Practice Five, is just the fluidity of getting through the progressions and being able to anticipate,” Yurcich said Wednesday evening on the practice fields. “He’s more well-versed in the system, second year, you can see that. I think he feels that right now, so just it’s probably not one thing, it’s everything right now. Just more of a comfort zone with how I call it, what we’re looking for, what we’re trying to get done. More familiarity.”
The Yurcich-Clifford marriage got off to a promising start last year as Penn State began the season 5-0, but after Clifford’s injury in the Iowa game, the offense struggled. Clifford completed a career-high 61% of his passes for 3,107 yards and 21 touchdowns with eight interceptions.
The makeup of the quarterback room has changed around Clifford, too. Ta’Quan Roberson transferred to UConn this offseason, while five-star Drew Allar and three-star Beau Pribula enrolled early to join Clifford and redshirt freshman Christian Veilleux under Yurcich’s tutelage.
Even with Clifford’s extensive experience in college football, Yurcich still plans to give him plenty of reps this spring. As time goes on and the depth chart starts to settle out, then Yurcich and coach James Franklin will start to tailor the reps to who needs to be ready for action in games.
“Well, you try to break them up and keep them as even as you possibly can,” Yurcich said. “At the same time, you have to start giving a higher ratio to the guys that you’d think you have to get game ready. We don’t have to concern ourselves with that right now. But as spring comes to a close and you get into fall camp, you have to be mindful of that, and that’s the hard part, right, getting everybody enough reps to get them a good evaluation to make sure that your depth chart’s where it needs to be and also the amount of reps it takes to prepare guys.”
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There’s plenty of excitement for the arrivals of Allar, just the third five-star quarterback to sign with Penn State, and Pribula, a lifelong Penn State fan who starred at Central York. Yurcich praised the high school programs of each player — Allar played for Medina in Northeast Ohio — as something that helped them arrive in State College ready to compete.
Yurcich has had just five practices with each quarterback, so he said he can’t give a full evaluation of each. But he knows where each needs to develop and how their previous time has prepared them for life at Penn State.
Clifford seems poised to be Penn State’s starter when the season opens at Purdue in prime time on Sept. 1, but the Nittany Lions saw last year how important having a backup quarterback ready to go is, whether that’s Veilleux, Allar or Pribula. And the newcomers are putting themselves in a positive position so far this spring.
“I think both Beau and Drew were coached extremely well in high school in different systems, so just our system’s different than their systems and just getting the verbiage down, being under center at times, being able to have to direct protections, even run checks at times, all of those things are probably the biggest, I wouldn’t say obstacles, but areas of growth right now for us with regard to the young quarterbacks,” Yurcich said.
“But they’re doing an excellent job. They’re very far along because of how they were groomed in high school, so they show a lot of arm talent, they have good feet, they have good pocket awareness, both of them. And right now to elaborate any further, I just don’t have enough banked reps to be able to give you a full report card on them.”
Daniel Gallen covers Penn State for PennLive. He can be reached at dgallen@pennlive.com. You can follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Follow PennLive’s Penn State coverage on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.