STATE COLLEGE — Penn State football fans learned more about Andy Kotelnicki in 35 minutes Friday than they learned about Mike Yurcich in three years.
Kotelnicki, who succeeded Yurcich as the Nittany Lions’ offensive coordinator, put himself out there in his introductory press conference at Beaver Stadium.
He talked about how receiving a white helmet with a blue stripe from his mother led him to becoming a Penn State fan while growing up in Litchfield, Minn. (population 6,624) and how he and his two brothers head-butted each other and ran into trees to, um, test the helmet.
He equated offensive football to a Dairy Queen Blizzard. That’s no joke.
“We want to make sure we have the vanilla (ice cream) part of our offense mastered to the point that it’s a solid foundation of everything that we can do,” Kotelnicki said. “When we mix in all that goodies and stuff, it’s going to make something that’s really awesome.”
He explained why he has a graphic of Tigger and Eeyore pinned to the top of his X (formerly known as Twitter) account.
“Who would you rather live your life like?” he asked. “Anyone who has read ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ knows exactly what those two characters are like. One’s very lethargic and he’s down and his body language stinks. The other guy’s just fired up no matter what the situation is.”
Andy Kotelnicki was certainly fired up Friday. He was refreshingly open, engaging and animated.
He won the press conference, but can he be a winning offensive coordinator? Can he help Penn State make the College Football Playoff next year and perhaps win a Big Ten championship?
That’s why Lions coach James Franklin hired him and why he fired Yurcich the day after a 24-15 loss to Michigan, now the No. 1 team in the country.
Like many Penn State fans, Franklin wants to win a national championship. He believes that Kotelnicki, who has had tremendous success with head coach Lance Leipold at Wisconsin-Whitewater, Buffalo and Kansas (a program on the rise), can be a catalyst for the Lions to reach the summit.
“It was 11 years that Coach (Leipold) and I worked together,” Kotelnicki said. “I’m very thankful that I got to be his offensive coordinator for all those stops that we had.
“This is one of those jobs for me personally but also for me professionally to grow and expand and to challenge myself in the world of college football.”
Kotelnicki has been charged with energizing an offense that struggled miserably in losses to Ohio State and Michigan and to further develop quarterback Drew Allar.
“I really like Coach K a lot,” Allar said. “I think he has done a great job of getting to a lot of guys on the offense these last two weeks. I’m excited to work with him in the future and just learn everything I can under him because he seems like a really good coach.”
Kotelnicki, a Division III center in college, will coach the Penn State quarterbacks with graduate assistant Danny O’Brien, who has a strong bond with Allar, and Franklin. He said he has coached every offensive position during his 20 seasons as a coordinator at all three NCAA levels.
“That has allowed me to have some big-picture thinking,” he said. “The most important position is the quarterback, but the most important position group is the offensive line.
“If you can start what you want to do schematically, you start from what the linemen are able to do well and what the quarterback is able to do well. If you have a good understanding of that, you should always be able to put yourself in position to be successful.”
Kotelnicki said he believes in simplicity, which interim co-offensive coordinators Ja’Juan Seider and Ty Howle have stressed since they took over for the Rutgers and Michigan State games. He said he believes in putting players in their best position to succeed.
“It’s about the people, the players,” he said. “What do they do well? What are they capable of? What are their limitations? Let’s focus and do things that are going to put them in positions to be successful.
“It’s a hell of a lot easier to have a system and try to fit the pieces into it. You have to do a lot more critical reflection as a coach to figure out what makes the players go, what things they do well. If you can’t do this as a coordinator, in my opinion you’re missing the boat.”
Kotelnicki first met Franklin when he and Leipold were in State College for a coaching clinic several years ago. Franklin invited them to stop by his office the next day.
“We toured the Lasch Building and talked about football for two hours,” Kotelnicki said. “It was a very organic connection from the start. There was a lot of alignment through shared philosophies. We had similar values, too. That’s what started it.”
Kotelnicki would like nothing better than to end it with confetti falling from above during a trophy presentation. A childhood fan of Lions stars Curtis Enis and LaVar Arrington, he is living his dream.
“I’m 5 or 6 or 7 years old and my mom brings home a football helmet,” he said. “It’s white with a blue stripe. Sometime in the next year I see either on TV or in the paper that there’s a college football team wearing that same helmet. It’s Penn State.
“I immediately became a Penn State fan because they had the same helmet that I’d put on running into trees.”
With Kotelnicki on his staff, Franklin hopes the offense will rarely be stopped.
Source: Berkshire mont
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