James Franklin has a thing for quarterbacks. As coaches.
Five of the Nittany Lion’s 11 full-time coaches are former quarterbacks.
No surprise there.
After all, CJF was a QB himself.
First at Neshaminy High School, where as a starting quarterback Franklin took his team to its first-ever Pennsylvania state play-offs.
Then at East Stroudsburg, where he was a two-year starting signal-caller, guiding Denny Dowd’s squad to a 12-7-1 record. As a dual-threat QB, Franklin set 23 school records, was featured as a “Sports Illustrated” Face in the Crowd and passed for 33 TDs and over 4,500 yards, while running for 938 more.
These days, as Franklin enters his fifth season as the head coach at Penn State, he has four full-time assistants who were quarterbacks, and a chief of staff in Jemal Griffin, who was also a high school QB growing up in Baltimore.
Griffin quarterbacks the day-to-day behind-the scenes operations of the Penn State football program, which spent $41.4 million in 2016-17, but also earned $81.2 million. Read more about Griffin,the ultimate team-player, here.
ON THE OFFENSIVE
Three of those Penn State coaching assistants are on the offensive side of the ball, beginning with coordinator Ricky Rahne. He was a three-year starter at Cornell, where as a Big Red Hall of Famer he threw for over 7,700 yards and 54 TDs. He was the team’s MVP three times and finished his career No. 3 on the Ivy League’s all-time passing chart.
At Florida A & M, running backs coach Ju-Juan Seider won the Doug Williams Award for National Player of the Year (considered the Heisman Trophy of Historically Black Colleges) after throwing for over 2,500 yards and 27 touchdowns in 1999. ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper had Seider rated ahead of Tom Brady in the subsequent NFL Draft. Both went in the sixth round. Brady was the 199th pick overall, going to New England, while Seider was No. 205, by the San Diego Charters.
Wide receiver coach David Corley was a four-year starter at quarterback for William & Mary, where he set school career records for passing yards (9,805), total offense (10,948) and TD passes (73). As a pro quarterback, Corley played for two teams in the CFL and also played in the Arena Football League.
On the other side of the ball, Nittany Lion cornerbacks coach Terry Smith was a standout quarterback at Gateway High School and the WPIAL AAA Eastern Player of the Year in 1986, when he led Gateway to the league title. As a high school starter, Smith was 24-1-1, then switched to wide receiver when he came to Penn State, where he started for three seasons and served as team co-captain in 1991. (Smith was Gateway’s head coach from 2002-2012, going 101-30 with four WPIAL AAA runner-up finishes.)
FRANKLIN MINTS ’EM
Franklin likes ex-quarterbacks as current assistants. He said as much in February, shortly after hiring Seider and Corley.
“I think when you’re able to hire a coach that has got a quarterback background, they just typically see the world and see the game a little bit differently,” Franklin said at the time.
“…Quarterbacks are taught differently than other positions. From the time you’re a freshman, quarterbacks are taught to try to see the big picture and understand what every position is doing. Other positions, for the most part, you learn that position and try to become a master of that craft. Then maybe as you get to become an upperclassman, you start to see more of the big picture.”
Franklin’s past staffs were also full of ex-quarterbacks. Joe Moorhead was a starting QB at Fordham, while former offensive coordinator John Donovan was a high school all-league quarterback in New Jersey. Former defensive coordinator Bob Shoop was a two-year starter at quarterback at Riverview High school in Oakmont, Pa. (Shoop, as you recall, loved to watch film with former PSU QB Christian Hackenberg.) Even former consultant Jim Haslett, who was also an ex-NFL head coach, was a high school quarterback in Avalon, outside of Pittsburgh.
(Of course, longtime Penn Staters will point out that former quarterback Joe Paterno at one time also had three former QBs on his staff — Galen Hall, Jay Paterno and Mike McQueary.)
WHAT RICKY SAYS
Rahne, who enters his first full season as the Nittany Lions’ offensive coordinator, is excited to have the quarterback-playing and -coaching experience of both Seider and Corley.
“They’ve had a bunch of different experiences at other places,” Rahne said after the Blue-White Game. “David’s been a coordinator. Ju’Juan’s had experience at a number of different levels and he’s been in the spread offense for a long time, which has been invaluable for me.
“They both played quarterback, which helps me out — not just with the quarterbacks, but as a whole since everything goes through the quarterback in this offense, so we make sure we’re doing things the right way.”
As an assistant at West Virginia, Seider worked with quarterbacks Jarrett Brown, Geno Smith and Pat White. Both White and Smith were second-round NFL picks, and all three spent time in the NFL. Seider also coached quarterbacks at Lake Worth High School in Florida.
Corley is also familiar with the passing game from a coaching standpoint. He served as the interim offensive coordinator at UConn, and was a passing game coordinator when he coached at his alma mater, William & Mary.
And when you are counting former quarterback coaches, you can’t leave out Sam Williams, a longtime key part of the PSU specials teams coaching staff whose official title is special teams/recruiting assistant for quality control. Williams, who came to Penn State in early 2015 and also worked with Franklin at Vanderbilt, spent four seasons as the QB coach at Shepherd College in West Virginia.
WHERE’S WALLY?
And then there’s Wally.
On the current Penn State football staff, no one succeeded at a higher level or was in the NFL longer than Wally Richardson, the director of the Penn State Football Letterman’s Club.
Richardson spent three years as a backup in the NFL after quarterbacking Penn State to a 20-5 record as a starter. He led the Nittany Lions to bowl wins over Auburn and Texas, and guided the 1996 squad to an 11-2 record and a No. 7 ranking, with wins over USC, Michigan (in the Big House) and Wisconsin.
Now, it’s his job to keep former Nittany Lions — quarterbacks and otherwise — connected to the football program.
