ALTOONA, Pa. -- It was a historic 2020 season for Penn State for all the wrong reasons despite a roster loaded with talent and quite a bit of experience.
That talent showed up big time at pro day last week with Jayson Oweh and Micah Parsons putting up incredible numbers in nearly every event they participated in. Oweh played this year while Parsons opted out, largely because the Big Ten had zero clue what it was doing until it was too late, although it's still unsure if they still know what they're doing.
Why, though did that talent not translate to wins? And why did it go so horribly bad for a team that won 11 games the year before?
Well, as much as grown men want to blame it all on Parsons opting out, that's incredibly unfair for a player making a business decision that meant a lifetime of riches if done correctly. It's not all on James Franklin either, in fact, Franklin did admirably given the circumstances.
Franklin deserves a lot of blame, but also praise for managing to make the season salvageable and competent when things could've snowballed even worse. After all, it was his decision to hire Kirk Ciarrocca and that went about as well as the Run Your Route traffic pattern Penn State used when fans were able to come to games.
He did act quickly and kick Ciarrocca to the can right after the season and hired Mike Yurcich which should bode well for quarterback Sean Clifford who at times looked like he should've been playing at State High and not Penn State last season.
Clifford got benched for a quarter back who once ran the football 17 times in a single game ... a quarterback running 17 times is never a good thing unless of course the forward pass hadn't been invented yet. And after a brief look at the game of football in 2020, it had.
For this writer, though, it was a perfect storm of many things including Clifford's play, Ciarrocca's horrific offense and just a failure to launch from the get go. Sure, there was talent, but the inability to coach that talent for months in person and only able to coach in front of a camera is more of a factor when most of your offensive staff had not been retained.
The talent hasn't left, but will a full season of actual coaching and being on the field help? We will find out soon enough.
YOUR TURN: Why do you think the talent didn't translate to wins?