Quote Originally Posted by msstate7 View Post
Why wasn't he replaced this year then?
I think it was because he was the best RB we had - which is born out by the fact that he is #2 in our all-time career rushing yards. It's where I disagree with a lot of people who say "Joe should have changed his offense to take advantage of our strength in the running game." He did change his offense. Drastically. We looked nothing like PSU the past 2 years. It was a bastardized hybrid of his offense to focus getting the ball in the hands of his best runner - Fitz. Why? Joe told us from the beginning - he wants the ball in the hands of his best playmaker as much as possible. Fitz had proven over the past 2 years to be the best chance at winning with the personnel we had on offense. We were 17-4 when Fitz broke 100 yards. So Joe had a choice - ditch his best RB for more production in the passing game (with no guarantee that he could replace the overall production) or basically do what we had done the past 2 years - focus on Fitz running the ball.

I'm sure people will argue against my opinion on all of this. But, a tweet from Kylin I saw yesterday made me think. Kylin said "It's my time now. No more role playing." What roll was he playing? He was the starter all year - but he wasn't the focus of the running game. Fitz was. His roll was to compliment that. I think we see a big change in that next year. Key (or Mayden/Fields/whoever) will be a QB first and a compliment to Kylin and Nick Gibson instead of the focus of the running offense, and we see more of what made Joe so smart at Penn State.