How Penn State landed college football’s most creative OC

Kansas coach Lance Leipold knew the day would come when he’d receive the dreaded inquiry from another football coach about hiring away Andy Kotelnicki. Leipold had been through this process many times before with Kotelnicki, his confident and creative offensive coordinator who rose with him from Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater to Buffalo to Kansas.

“I jokingly say it, but we were together 11 seasons and that’s probably almost three times as long as most marriages last,” Leipold told The Athletic this week.

During the winter, Leipold received a text message from Penn State head coach James Franklin. Immediately, he knew where this was headed. The Nittany Lions were searching for an offensive coordinator after firing Mike Yurcich, and Franklin studied which coordinators were consistently producing explosive plays. Penn State was 103rd last season in explosive play rate, per TruMedia, while Kansas was seventh. The Jayhawks, with Kotelnicki calling plays, averaged 7.2 yards per play to Penn State’s 5.6.

Franklin reached out to Leipold as a professional courtesy before pulling off a hiring that should go down as one of the most impactful of the offseason.

“I knew there’d be a day that James Franklin was going to hire Andy,” Leipold said. “I could just tell. Andy is organized, detailed, presents himself with confidence and has a reason for what he’s doing.”

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Franklin told Leipold this wasn’t an easy text to send. He knew what Kotelnicki meant to Leipold as a friend, but also what he meant to Kansas’ success. Franklin admired Leipold’s staff from afar when it was at Buffalo and came into Beaver Stadium in 2019. Franklin interviewed Kotelnicki in 2021 for the vacant tight end coaching spot but hired Ty Howle instead.

There’s no easy way to pry away one of the top offensive architects from the head coach who helped listen and challenge Kotelnicki’s wildly creative concepts of what a college football offense could and should be. The continuity of the coaching staff was why Leipold felt so strongly that this group — his group — had a blueprint to be successful anywhere. Franklin, who knows just how valuable staff continuity is from when he went from Vanderbilt to Penn State, needed to make the right hire for Penn State to crack the 12-team College Football Playoff field. Kotelnicki is Franklin’s sixth offensive coordinator in his 11th season at Penn State.

This was the bittersweet ending that Leipold saw coming. Still, like most college football fans, he wants to keep watching Kotelnicki. He wants to see a mammoth offensive lineman go in motion or watch a tight end snap the ball and then catch it off a double pass for a touchdown. So many of the same principles of the dynamic offenses that Kotelnicki orchestrated at prior stops are now on display in Happy Valley.

No. 3 Penn State’s Saturday showdown against No. 4 Ohio State is the very hurdle Kotelnicki was hired to help Penn State clear. Penn State hasn’t beaten Ohio State since 2016. The Nittany Lions also haven’t had an offense with this much promise and intrigue since that 2016 group with Saquon Barkley, Trace McSorley and Chris Godwin.

“For me and for him, I think it’s played out for the most part the way we both expected it to,” Franklin said this month.

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Beau Pribula didn’t hesitate last week when Kotelnicki walked over to him on the practice field and asked if he could join. Penn State’s backup quarterback was walking around the perimeter of the field shirtless. He wanted to clear his mind and embrace one of the last 70-degree days of the year. Within days, the dual-threat quarterback would be called upon to lead the offense — and do so masterfully — at Wisconsin in relief of an injured Drew Allar.

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Soon, Kotelnicki asked if he should take his shirt off, too. Pribula told his 43-year-old coach — who reminds Leipold of Andy Reid both from a creativity and physique perspective — that he absolutely should walk shirtless with him.

“We had a little bro walk,” Pribula said. “We both had our shirts off kind of soaking in some Vitamin D.”

Leipold, upon hearing the story, laughs and asks if any photos exist. They do not. But, it reminds him of the time Kotelnicki showed up to one of Buffalo’s last walk-throughs of the 2020 season dressed as Santa Claus. For as much of a grind as the season is, there has to be a time for fun. At Kansas, they’d often end fall camp walk-throughs with a few exotic plays to keep everyone excited, Leipold said.

“You wanna sprinkle a little fun into it,” Leipold said. “He’s taken some of those suggestions and he’s taken a whole new level to how he goes about it.”

The philosophical part of Kotelnicki has resonated with Penn State’s offense as much as his jovial demeanor. Running back Nick Singleton said everyone on the offense has a different mood this year. Running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider said nobody feels like it’s fourth-and-inches when they walk into a meeting. Wide receiver Julian Fleming, like right tackle Anthony Donkoh and many others, calls Kotelnicki an offensive mastermind.

“He brings confidence when he walks in the room because, again, on offense, it’s all about confidence,” Seider said. “If you’re uptight or you’re pressing and you’re forcing the issues in the pass game, the run game, well, everybody feels that. And now it’s a sense of calm, like your preparation allows you to be confident.”

Penn State’s offense under Kotelnicki has a lot to be confident about. The Nittany Lions rank seventh in the FBS in yards per play (7.1), 16th in points per drive (2.97), seventh in third-down conversions (50 percent) and fifth in explosive play rate (17 percent). Allar said he feels like the “most prepared quarterback in the country” in large part because of the number of walk-throughs they do under Kotelnicki. Tight end Tyler Warren, a high school quarterback, has been a valuable chess piece as he’s thrown, rushed and caught a touchdown. Pribula has had a role in every game, much like 6-foot-4, 348-pound offensive lineman Vega Ioane, who has walloped defenders after going in motion.

“We want to make sure that our best players are touching the football and that we really want to be stressful for the defenses,” Kotelnicki said this month. “We’re always hunting and searching for more explosive plays.”

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Leipold said Kotelnicki refers to his teaching style as “class on grass.” Rather than sitting in the meeting room, players will often move through their plays as Kotelnicki instructs. Kotelnicki recognizes that some players learn better when it’s hands-on as opposed to diagramming a play. He’ll even take suggestions from players about what plays they should run.

With a more experienced roster at Kansas last year, Kotelnicki let players draw up their own plays. They outlined the defense, explained how they’d block and gave it a name that fit their terminology. At Penn State, Kotelnicki wants players to take ownership of this offense and trust that he’s here to maximize their strengths. If the play is good enough, he’s open to running it.

“That’s where the motion of the offensive lineman came from,” Leipold said. “It was a guy who I never would’ve suspected who came up with the idea and presented it. It became a useful play for us a year ago and I see that he has taken it there to Penn State.”

Kotelnicki often reminds players that three to five plays can swing any game. There’s a purpose to what plays they’re running, and though some of the plays are so exotic it might seem like Kotelnicki drew them up in the backyard, there’s dedicated practice time for repping everything. It’s not a gimmick but rather finding creative solutions to getting more players involved and creating touches in different ways.

In all likelihood, Kotelnicki’s philosophical ideas wouldn’t resonate as well if the on-field results didn’t align. When Fleming, the former Ohio State wide receiver, was in the transfer portal in December, he met with Kotelnicki. The coordinator pulled up a chart to prove that his offense, regardless of level, works.

“What he’s done is he’ll compare the success of the offense and the targets to certain people and also what are normal targets probably to players at that position in the NFL per game,” Leipold said. “Andy always has the other saying that statistics lie and liars use statistics, but at the same time, he knows how to show them.”

Fleming said what Kotelnicki told him about his role that day has held true. What Franklin thought and hoped he was getting in the man with the big personality and outside-the-box thinking has materialized, too.

“Andy is gonna be a head coach here at some point soon,” Leipold said. “Our continuity is what helped us really move the needle here, and obviously there’s maybe some ripple from Andy leaving. … Yeah, it was bittersweet when he left and tough to handle. … At the end of the day, you have to respect it and wish everyone the best in their next moves.”

Should Penn State’s offense live up to expectations Saturday and dethrone Ohio State, there’s no telling how far this team and the man calling the plays can go this season.

(Top photo of Drew Allar and Andy Kotelnicki: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)

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