Most important thing for Lions this spring is ...

ALTOONA, Pa. -- Remember what you were doing exactly four years ago, when just about everything shut down from COVID and we were all stuck inside?

Per my "Memories" feature that shows up every day on a certain social media platform, I was reminded Wednesday about how I spent every afternoon out at a local sandlot playing baseball with my 7-year-old son. And it was awesome!

You know who things weren't awesome for at this time back in 2020? Kirk Ciarroccca.

Try being the new offensive coordinator at a place like Penn State, with all the expectations and pressure, and you find yourself having to get to know the players and install your system almost entirely through Zoom meetings.

How many of us had ever even heard of Zoom at that time? Had you ever tried to learn anything complex and detailed over a video call prior to Zoom essentially taking over the world for a while?

Anyway, imagine the difficulty of being a new boss or new leader in an organization and having to come in and do a vast majority of your job that way, as Ciarrocca did? That's a big reason why I've always felt Ciarrocca got such a raw deal at Penn State, because he was put in an incredibly difficult situation, got only one season in the program and then was fired by James Franklin, who wanted to bring in Mike Yurcich.

Fast forward four years, and thankfully we no longer have to rely on Zoom for everything. Especially when it comes to college football coordinators who are tasked with installing their systems.

Penn State finds itself in the very rare situation of having to replace all three coordinators. Sure, that sort of thing might happen when there's a new head coach and entirely new staff, but stable, consistent programs don't often have to fill all three coordinator spots in one offseason.

Mike Yurcich was fired late last season, and Andy Kotelnicki was brought in from Kansas as the new offensive coordinator.

Manny Diaz left to become head coach at Duke, and former Indiana head coach Tom Allen is the new defensive coordinator.

Stacy Collins went back to Boise State, and Justin Lustig came from Vanderbilt as the new special teams coordinator.

Make no mistake, how successful the Nittany Lions will be this fall is very much dependent on these three coordinators all hitting their stride right out of the gate in year one.

Franklin praised the three new coaches for how they've adapted coming into the program.

"I do want to kind of pat the coaches on their back because it's been painstaking to go through the entire process," Franklin said. "There's been a lot of humility I think in those rooms, as well. For Tom to be able to compromise and for Andy to be able to compromise and Coach Lustig to be able to compromise where it's appropriate I think has been really good."

Compromise is a key word there. And it will continue to be a key word for any coordinator Franklin brings in. That's because Franklin knows what he wants from each unit, and since the program has been largely successful in a lot of ways, Franklin knows that what has worked in the past can continue to work in the future.

But with any new coach, he's going to want to bring his own style to the table, and run things his way. While Franklin says he wants the coordinators to be head coaches of their units, the reality is that Franklin is the head coach, and if he wants something done, it's going to get done.

Take, for instance, Penn State's tight end usage in recent years. Yurcich didn't have a great track record utilizing tight ends before coming to the Lions, and he struggled with that in year one in 2021. But Franklin knew that some of the program's better players were at the tight end position, and one gets the impression that he outright forced Yurcich to do anything and everything he could to use them more.

Yurcich was forced to compromise ... or else. He had no choice.

But let's now go back to Ciarrocca in 2020. He absolutely was forced to compromise, with Franklin talking at the time about having to "blend" Penn State's offense with what Ciarrocca was bringing from Minnesota. So, not only did Ciarrocca have to install a system during a nationwide crisis while using Zoom, he really didn't even get to install his entire system, because Franklin still was using large chunks of what Joe Moorhead and Ricky Rahne did.

So, again, compromise is an interesting word choice when Franklin was talking about the new coordinators. They have to compromise with what they want to do.

The big question, though, is: How much will Franklin be willing to compromise and give way to the new coordinators to run what they truly want to run?

On offense, for instance, Kotelnicki was running the triple option at Kansas. He's obviously not going to be able to run the triple option with Drew Allar, so where does that leave Penn State's offense.

Probably with a lot of compromising to do from all parties involved.

Here's what Franklin had to say about Kotelnicki and how he can help Allar and the passing game.

"I think the play-action pass will be a big part of that with Drew, with Andy, with our offense in general," Franklin said.

"The other thing is, I think some things that you can do that we did later in the season, I think the last two games, if you look at our explosive play percentage, it dramatically increased. I think there's some things that you can do with the wide receivers in terms of motion, in terms of alignment, like stacks and bunches and things like that, that we can do to help our guys versus man coverage. I think that's going to be really, really important for us.

"I would say the combination of, you look at what they were able to do at Kansas, what we were able to do the last couple of games, play-action pass specifically, motions, shifts, formations, bunches, stacks, things like that to make it more challenging for people in man coverage. I think those are probably the biggest things that jump out to us."

Allen has the incredibly difficult job of replacing Diaz, who really revolutionized Penn State's defense in a lot of ways with his highly aggressive style of play.

Allen spent eight years as the Hoosiers' head coach, so he'll now get to focus solely on defense and not overseeing everything in the program. And obviously, the Penn State program is nothing close to the Indiana program.

"I know Tom is really, really enjoying being a coordinator again," Franklin said.

We won't know for sure how well the coordinators and players have all adapted coming out of spring. Sure, everybody's gonna be saying stuff like, "Oh, it's been great getting to know each other, learning new stuff" and yada, yada, yada.

But the reality is we will have to wait until the season rolls around -- and a good bit of the season for that matter -- before we'll really know if all these moving parts are working cohesively.

"I think it's obviously really important," Franklin said of the coordinators' acclimation this spring. "It's always important, but I think when you have different pieces of the puzzle, it magnifies it.

"I think the most important thing is we have to get through the 15 practices and the coaches and the players feel like we have a really good understanding of how we want to play, who we want to play in terms of our depth, and then on top of that what are our strengths and what are our weaknesses and be able to play to those strengths and be able to work on those weaknesses between now and the start of training camp."