If you ignore all the "other things" that have happened over the past few years in State College, you would be hard pressed to find a man more scrutinized than John Donovan.

And that's fair. He is after all the architect of Penn State's offense and in turn the Nittany Lions' ability score points. Something that most would consider to be an important part of winning football games.

As it pertains to the optics of Penn State's offense it's reasonable to understand why fans have not so subtly wondered if Donovan is the man for the job. Some weeks the Nittany Lions look great, other weeks they look confused and incapable of getting the most basic things correct. The sign of a young team or the sign of a poorly coached team? Depends who you ask.

The result, an extremely present belief that Donovan is coaching his final games at Penn State. While it's a completely unfounded theory, it has been talked about enough by nearly everyone not paid to make the decision that it's a storyline whether it should be or not.

Is there a case to not fire him? Absolutely. And this is it.

The most important aspect of this defense is to forget the Bill O'Brien years. O'Brien coached a Penn State team well stocked with talent, well equipped to face trying times and with NFL players on both sides of the ball. Nothing about what O'Brien did was easy, but very little of his success came without the aid of what he was given to work with. Chances are the Nittany Lions were going to be a half decent team with or without his help.

This is relevant because it's impossible to say he and Donovan started off with the same building blocks on offense. The constant somewhat cultish thought experiment of "What would O'Brien do?" is rendered fairly useless. Maybe O'Brien would get more out of this team, maybe he wouldn't. In the end it doesn't matter and in the end O'Brien's reputation for coaching was the result of a much more well put together roster. And often forgot, O'Brien's offenses weren't always the most watchable either.

So looking at Donovan in his two years on the job the question is simple. Did Penn State get better than it was last year?

And the answer is yes.

In nearly every aspect of the box score Penn State is a better team. (2015 stats through nine games)

The short version. Penn State is scoring more points, gaining more yards, turning the ball over less and passing more efficiently while running the ball more effectively. When the Nittany Lions get in the red zone they score more often than not, and when they score they're almost always touchdowns.

But maybe that's simply the product of playing bad teams out of conference. How do things compare from this season to last season just in conference play? Well it turns out that has gotten better too.

In fact, Penn State is making fairly large strides in nearly every meaningful offensive category in Big Ten play. The only thing the Nittany Lions can't do is convert third downs, for whatever reason Penn State is still 13th in third down conversion rate, partially the product of having played more conference games than nearly all of the Big Ten. Partially a product of an improved but not yet full functional offense. Partially Donovan's fault.

And so the new question is simple: If James Franklin looks at those stats and sees progress or if he looks at the issues the Nittany Lions have had that transcend the box score and sees a need to make a change. Lots of people can make a bad statistical team look better, it's harder to stay there, it's even hard to keep the improvement going. If Franklin feels like Donovan is making the most of what he has, what else can you ask for? If he thinks things could be going better and going faster, then even improvements can't save Donovan.

Chances are we won't know the answer for a few more months. Penn State has only played five games in conference so far this year. The bottom could fall out, the Nittany Lions are in for their toughest stretch of the season.

Wanting Penn State to move on from the John Donovan era isn't the most outrageous argument to come out of Penn State's season.

But to say Penn State's offense hasn't gotten remarkably better in the last 12 months under his watch would be unfair. If anything, the slow but steady improvement goes to show that one year isn't enough to make a decision.

Especially if you're in Penn State's position.

That leads us to the ultimate question.

If this isn't the improvement you want to see, then what is?