After two years as the offensive coordinator at the University of Mary, a Division II program in Bismarck, North Dakota, the chance to take the same position at Division III powerhouse Wisconsin-Whitewater represented a major step up the coaching ladder for Andy Kotelnicki.

He’d played offensive line at Division III Wisconsin-River Falls and spent five seasons as the school’s offensive coordinator before being hired by former Mary coach Myron Schulz. Winners of five of the previous six national championships when Kotelnicki was approached by former Whitewater coach Lance Leipold following the 2012 season, the Warhawks presented a larger platform, a bigger stage and the chance to prove something: That his offensive scheme and philosophy would travel across different levels of competition.

I want to go to a place where I know it’s me or it’s not me, Kotelnicki told Schulz, meaning a program that was on par in terms of talent and resources with teams in the same orbit.

“I respected him for that,” Schulz said.

After helping Whitewater go back-to-back as unbeaten national champions in 2013 and 2014, Kotelnicki would follow Leipold to Buffalo and then to Kansas, where he was instrumental in the Jayhawks’ rapid and remarkable climb from the bottom rung of the Bowl Subdivision.

But there are few programs bigger than Penn State, where Kotelnicki is in his first season, and few games bigger than the No. 3 Nittany Lions’ matchup on Saturday against No. 4 Ohio State. With Kotelnicki at the controls, a unique and constantly evolving offense has driven an unbeaten push into November and raised hopes that this is the year PSU makes the leap to the top of the Big Ten.

“We kind of started to look at who are the coordinators and who are the teams that are producing explosive plays, and not just because their genetics are better,” Penn State coach James Franklin said. “Where are the explosive plays coming from? How are they being created? Are they happening on a consistent basis? Also, are they doing it against their biggest competition? When you kind of looked at those types of things, the list narrowed down pretty quickly.”

Kotelnicki’s ‘fusion,’ ‘Blizzard’ offense

The scheme Kotelnicki brought to Penn State is a study in contrasts: wordy but not necessarily complex, impossible to pigeonhole into one specific style, quarterback-driven but not pass-happy.

The defining characteristic is an ability to engineer tentativeness and confusion with pre-snap motions and shifts. In his own words, the system is like a Dairy Queen Blizzard — a mixed-up, stirred-together hodgepodge of this, that and the other that is still, at its base level, almost entirely vanilla ice cream.

“The Blizzard, in itself, is a wonderful dessert,” Kotelnicki said in August. “It looks complicated because it’s messy inside, right, and the person working there puts that in the machine with the ice cream. But fundamentally, it’s mostly made up of what, vanilla ice cream? That’s what we talk about, is simplicity versus complexion. It’s going to look really complex, but all it is, is two ingredients mixed together.”

Kotelnicki developed the scheme by taking bits of pieces of the coaches and offenses he’s worked for and with along the way, with these influences eventually blending together to form what has been one of the most creative offenses in the Power Four.

“He’s very analytic, very intelligent, but he’s really good at what I’d call ‘fusion,’ like in the food sense,” said Shulz. “Where you take two types of cultures and you fuse them together. He gets ideas and he fuses them into one thing.”

What has made the system so difficult to defend is the window dressing that occurs in the interlude between when the offense breaks the huddle — often in a flash, which Kotelnicki calls “Sugar Huddles” — and the snap. What unfolds is a dance that keeps defenses off balance and uncomfortable: skill players will be sent in motion, shifted on and off the line of scrimmage, and often placed in disorienting alignment — such as a wide receiver originally lined up in the backfield — before being flexed into a more traditional formation.

“Every defensive system is going to have its weakness,” said former Wisconsin-River Falls coach John O’Grady, “and it seems like he really understands that well and can exploit it. He really studies defenses and he’s able to exploit them.”

The end goal is to wobble defenses and disrupt timing, leaving defenders one beat late as they attempt to run through pre-snap diagnoses and guess what will happen next.

“His goal was always to put the defense in some form of stress,” Shulz said. “And that’s either by playing fast, that’s either with checks or that’s with a bunch of window dressing with formation shifts and motions. They can’t just put their cleats in the ground and be lined up and ready to play. They’ve always got to be thinking and checking.”

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Small-school roots lead to Penn State

Kotelnicki started coaching partway through his senior year at River Falls, when a broken ankle ended his season and led him to ask O’Grady: Can I help you guys coach?

“Andy jumped right into it,” O’Grady said. “You could tell, this was not just going to be a hobby for him. This was going to be a lifestyle. When that injury occurred and he started coaching, it became apparent immediately that this guy wanted to coach and he was going to be really good at it.”

Kotelnicki’s path to Penn State from the bottom rungs of college football has helped to shape his career and his coaching worldview, according to those who worked with him on the Division II and III levels.

The dramatically smaller staff sizes on these levels compared to the Bowl Subdivision often force coaches to wear multiple hats. At River Falls, for example, where there were only three full-time assistants on staff, Kotelnicki helped coach the secondary.

The same programs are so limited compared to the bells and whistles found at programs such as Kansas and Penn State that coaches “learn to do more with less,” said Schulz.

“Plus you’re a jack of all trades, plus you have to learn how to coach all positions. I think you really learn how to coach and how to coach everything. You don’t get siloed into a certain position.”

The most remarkable aspect of Kotelnicki’s rise to Penn State is that it happened at all. The wide majority of FBS head coaches and coordinators don’t start at the very bottom of college football, though current success stories such as Leipold, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer and Kansas State’s Chris Klieman have bucked that trend.

“It’s hard to get to the upper levels when you’re from a Division III school. It’s extremely difficult,” O’Grady said. “The high-level coaching communities, it’s extremely difficult to get there. I’m not surprised by what he’s done, but it’s surprising that he’s been able to make it as far as he has. Because that’s tough.

“Did I ever think he would reach this level? Probably not. Because I probably didn’t think he had much of a chance. Did I think he had developed himself as a coach to coach pretty much anywhere? Yeah, no question about it.”

Penn State’s huge offensive improvement

Kotelnicki’s impact on Penn State can be seen in its unbeaten record and the profound improvement of an offense that has spent a good chunk of the Franklin era as a hit-or-miss frustration.

A year ago, the Nittany Lions finished 55th nationally in yards per game and 75th in yards per play, dropping to 100th nationally in yards per snap in conference play. While effective at avoiding turnovers, Penn State’s passing game ranked tied for 90th in the FBS in yards per pass attempt and 57th in efficiency rating.

Through eight games, this year’s team is up to 13th in yards per game, increasing that total by more than 60 yards per game, and has soared to fifth among Power Four teams in yards per play.

The improvement through the air has been almost remarkable: the Nittany Lions rank 29th in the FBS in passing yards per game despite being 115th nationally in total attempts. The Nittany Lions are sixth in yards per pass and fifth efficiency rating.

But this increase in production has come against a schedule featuring no team currently ranked in the US LBM Coaches Poll and just two opponents, Illinois and Wisconsin, currently with a winning record. Ohio State’s defense will provide a different sort of test.

It’s also a key marker for how far this offense has come under Kotelnicki. A year ago, the Nittany Lions scored a combined 27 points and averaged only 3.7 yards per play in losses to the Buckeyes and Michigan. Across 12 games against ranked competition from 2021-23, Penn State completed 55.8% of pass attempts on 6.3 yards per throw. But the offense helping beat Ohio State for just the second time in James Franklin’s 11-season tenure is the ultimate litmus test.

“We’re going to be challenged this week and we need to step up to the plate,” said left tackle Drew Shelton.

Last weekend’s win against the Badgers showed the Nittany Lions’ adaptability. With starting quarterback Drew Allar injured late in the first half, they turned to backup Drew Pribula, who completed 11 of 13 attempts for 98 yards and a touchdown with another 28 rushing yards to key the 28-13 win. Last season at Kansas, the Jayhawks lost starting quarterback Jalon Daniels after just three games but rallied behind backup Jason Bean to win nine games and finish in the Top 25 for the first time since 2007.

That’s the Kotelnicki system in action: Like a Blizzard, the pieces within the offense can be mixed and matched to provide subtle changes to the larger formula.

“What’s nice about us, and it was a big reason in bringing Andy here,” Franklin said, “is we do enough things and we have enough diversity within our playbook that we are able to focus on the strengths of the players that are in there.”