Penn State’s three new coordinators hit The 100 Day milestone this Thursday. That’s days at Penn State. Combined. While the trio — OC Andy Kotelnicki, DC Tom Allen and ST coordinator Justin Lustig — bring decades of coaching experience to Lasch Building, they certainly don’t know Nittany Lion football like this quartet:
Hakeem Beamon, Dvon Ellies, Smith Vilbert and Sal Wormley.
Together, that Fab Four has been at Penn State for almost two decades. For each one of them, the 2024 season will be their sixth (and last) at Penn State — their stays extended due a combination of redshirts, injuries and the 2020 COVID season not counting toward their eligibility.
On Penn State’s roster, they have earned the “R-Sr+” designation.
(BTW, six ain’t that much, when you consider that dude from Miami who is starting Year 9.)
Together, the PSU4 have played in 123 games at Penn State, paced by Ellies’ 43 appearances. And they have amassed 44 starts — led by OG Wormley (26), DT Beamon (17), DT Ellies (10) and DE Vilbert (1). Don’t discount that one Vilbert start, either. It came against Arkansas in the 2022 Outback Bowl, a game in which he totaled three sacks. And those 44 starts? That number could practically double after the 2024 season.
While Wormley will help anchor an offensive line that loses three starters, Ellies will be one of the key vocal(ist?) leaders in the entire Penn State locker room. He’s a culture-driver whose return, a bit unexpected, will mean as much to the Nittany Lions off the field as on it.
His head coach, James Franklin, will be among the first to tell you that.
“I’m really proud of Dvon and his total development since he’s been here,” Franklin said in the latter stages of the 2023 season. “His is maybe one of the more impressive developments I’ve seen in my 13 years (as a head coach at Vanderbilt and Penn State). I’m just so proud of him in school, in football and as a leader.”
At the team’s postseason banquet, Ellies, along with ’23 co-captain Malick Meiga, was named a recipient of the Ridge Riley Memorial Award, given in recognition of their leadership in team core values. Ellies was also named to the 2023 watch lists for the Allstate Good Works Team and the Wuerffel Trophy, given to college football player “who best combines exemplary community service with athletic and academic achievement.”
SENIOR MOMENTS
Overall, the Nittany Lions’ 2024 roster, according to Penn State’s most recent release, features 23 seniors of various types:
• 4 entering their sixth season (R-Sr+)
• 10 entering their fifth season (R-Sr.)
• 9 entering their fourth season, having already used three seasons of eligibility (Sr.)
Now, that’s a good amount, in every sense of the word. But it does not match the 47 seniors who were on Penn State’s official roster in 1986, when it went 12-0 and won the national championship. Fourteen of those 47 were fifth-year seniors — a rarity at the time, at least at Penn State. All 14 had redshirted in 1982, when the Nittany Lions won their first national championship. But each also played in 1985, when Penn State finished the regular season undefeated and ranked No. 1, but lost to No. 3 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. That means those 14 — led decidedly by gutsy and driven College Football Hall of Famer Shane Conlan — were on three teams that played for the national title over five seasons.
The senior group in 2024 is only half that size, but their impact could be just as important. In many ways, they’ll form the foundation of the upcoming season’s squad, especially given the peripatetic nature of college football these days.
In addition to the three new coordinators, Franklin has five new analysts, although they are varying degrees of “new.” Former Penn State G.A. Mark Dupuis is back after a stint as the wide receivers coach at Old Dominion under Monarchs head coach Ricky Rahne, the former Penn State assistant. And, as is all the vogue these days, two of the coordinators have brought their own analysts — Bill Queisert, who was with Kotelnicki at Kansas, and Thomas Allen, who worked for his dad at Indiana.
The Nittany Lions’ roster also features 16 new freshmen who enrolled early two weeks ago (nine more will arrive in May), as well as six transfers and three walk-ons.
Meantime, Penn State has lost 23 players who were on the 2023 opening game roster against West Virginia. That’s a lot of moving parts, even for a high-stakes business enterprise — college football — that is all about change and churn, to say nothing of Sturm und Drang, these days.
In addition to Ellies, look for two returning seniors to step up as new captains in 2024: fifth-year center Nick Dawkins and uber-talented tight end Tyler Warren (back for a fourth year, after much consternation). They, like Ellies, already have their degrees. They, like Ellies, have the personalities, passion, strong classroom presence and positive attitudes that make them likeable but also worthy of their teammates’ respect.
For Penn State to succeed in the new Big Ten, they must match Ellies step-by-step in setting the tone for the Nittany Lions, from the darkest days of winter weight workout, to player-led summer sessions, from managing the pratfalls and pitfalls of NIL to soft-pedaling the potential backlash from new names in the locker room that could be grabbing passes and taking starting spots at corner and kicking that would have gone to longtime Nittany Lions. It is a long 220 days until the season-opener at West Virginia.
Dawkins personifies that leadership. He’s started the Dawkins Family Foundation, spending some of his NIL earnings and many hours of his time. At the team’s post-season banquet he earned a pair of honors — the Public Service Award and the Letterman’s Club Scholarship, which went to the outstanding graduating senior.
He leads with every step he takes. So much so, that Franklin said Dawkins was almost named a team co-captain last preseason, even though the O-line was already represented by a similarly stellar student-athlete in the person of top 10 NFL Draft pick Olu Fashanu.
“Dawkins is a guy that, again, I think the staff and the players have a ton of respect for,” Franklin said. “He’s done things the right way since he got on campus. He’s one of our more natural charismatic leaders. He’s super smart; he’s articulate. I think he’s really a team-first guy, so he has kept working and waited for the opportunity to present itself and it has — and he’s run with it.”
Fittingly, Dawkins will likely be the starting center of the 2024 Nittany Lions. The players make the team, which is what Terry Smith — a former Penn State co-captain himself and the only assistant coach who has been with Franklin his entire tenure in Happy Valley — told me a few years ago. It’s wise insight from PSU’s OG, worth repeating.
“As coaches, we always know when we’re going to have a good team,” Smith said. “It’s when the players are controlling the locker room. It’s not when the coaches are going in there.”
