UVA Football Notebook: Penn State’s offense struggles might impact Marques Hagans

When UVA alum Marques Hagans left the staff at Virginia to take the job as wide-receivers coach at Penn State in the offseason, it seemed to me that Hagans was not just spreading his wings and flying, finally, but rather, taking a necessary step toward building his resume to one day be a Power 5 head coach.

The Penn State job is Hagans’ first away from his alma mater – incredibly, Hagans had served on the staffs of Mike London, Bronco Mendenhall and Tony Elliott; it’s rare to see an assistant span three different head coaches at one school.

And as I noted at the time he took the Penn State job, getting out of Charlottesville when he did would help wash away any of the stink that would come from the Elliott regime, last season’s 3-7 record and poor recruiting foretelling more struggles going forward.

That part of the story has, unfortunately for UVA fans, played out as expected – Virginia is 2-8 in Year 2 under Elliott, so, 5-15 through two seasons, continued poor recruiting not giving us reason to think things are getting better, it’s a dumpster fire.

When the inevitable finally happens, it’s not a good look on the head coach, sure, but neither is it a good look for the assistants who go down with the ship, in terms of their future job prospects.

The situation for Hagans at Penn State, unfortunately for him, hasn’t been the cleansing agent that we’d all assumed.

Head coach James Franklin, fresh off the 24-15 loss to third-ranked Michigan on Saturday, in a game that saw the Nittany Lions put up a paltry 238 yards of total offense, just 74 through the air, fired his offensive coordinator, Mike Yurcich, his fifth OC in his 10 years at the school.

The rub has been the passing game, which ranks an anemic 88th nationally in yards per game (206.1), which could be an indictment on Yurcich’s inability to develop five-star Class of 2022 QB recruit Drew Allar, but there’s also talk around the program that at least some of the issue comes from the wide-receiver room.

The job was open for Hagans in the first place because Franklin fired Taylor Stubblefield, and that was after a 2022 season that saw Penn State put up 252.5 yards per game through the air, ranking 46th nationally.

Franklin hasn’t commented on the record about his decision to dismiss Yurcich beyond a boilerplate “we wish him and his family nothing but the best in the future,” but he did have this to say about the passing game after the loss to Michigan on Saturday:

“We gotta do a better job of calling a game to allow a quarterback to get into rhythm. That is critical. We gotta find easy completions for our quarterback to get into rhythm. That’s what everybody does.”

I fear for Hagans here that Franklin, who has proven to be adept at building a program that can win 10 games a year, but can’t seem to get over the hump against the Michigans and Ohio States, the problems in the past few years being on the offensive side, will decide after the season to make more sweeping changes in his offensive room.

Hagans seems destined to be a Power 5 head coach in the not-too-distant future.

Selfishly, I’m hoping it’s at Virginia.

At the moment, though, I’m hoping for him this Penn State sojourn isn’t a stain on his resume.