With the onset of a new Big Ten and an expanded college football playoff, Penn State football faces a critical, every-practice-matters scenario. It might have been one thing if the Nittany Lions were bringing back a ton of old faces, but with three brand new coordinators, and plenty of players stepping into bigger roles, there’s lot of ground to cover.
Because if there has been a story to tell of the Nittany Lions’ offense over the past several seasons, it’s the value of Year 2 over Year 1, except Penn State doesn’t want to wait a full season to get the wheels moving. It wants to get going right now. The schedule is too hard, the stakes too high. Waiting for next season to finally get on the same page isn’t what anyone inside the Lasch Building is after.
That means hammering home a lot of the basics this spring. So don’t expect the offense to be splitting the atom at the Blue White game in a few weeks. Expect it to be working on the little things.
“I hate to keep saying the same thing to you guys over and over and over again, but I feel [spring practice] is about a foundation,” Penn State coach James Franklin told reporters on Tuesday after practice. “I think we’ve laid a foundation where most of the offense, defense, and special teams are in right now. And then you got a chance to kind of evaluate. There’s still that aspect of ‘OK, we’ll put all this stuff in, and then we’ll go through all this stuff in the summer, and then we got to kind of really figure out what our identity is.’
“Like, OK, these are the things that we have in the playbook. What’s going to be the identity of our defense this year? What’s going to be the identity of our offense this year? And play to those strengths and then work on our weaknesses. But I don’t mean to keep answering that way. But that’s really kind of where we are in spring ball is laying a foundation and I feel good about what we’ve done up to this point.”
Franklin has alluded to playing to strengths in the past, and the possibility that he didn’t always believe former offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich was doing that to the best of his ability. Whatever the case might be on that front, it’s safe to say the trio of new coordinators won’t have any success if they try to mold their new unit into something that it isn’t, or something that it can’t be. Fortunately for Penn State’s offense in particular, it’s a group not short on potential at any position, a good sign for a coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, who has made his mark in the profession getting the most out of what he has.
But what he has can only go so far if it isn’t prepared for the moment.
“I think that just really speaks on how important these two camps coming up are gonna be, with the spring coming up now and then this summer camp/fall camp, coming in August,” Penn State tight end Tyler Warren said earlier this year. “Really the spring is probably the most important, getting all the new stuff in, and there’s going to be hiccups and kinks and the offense is gonna be slow in spots, but making sure we’re as primed and knowledgeable in this offense as we can be for when we get to fall camp. And make sure fall camp isn’t really a learning spot; it’s more of a polishing it up and getting everything set.”
And with 157 days until Penn State faces West Virginia, the Nittany Lions won’t need to have everything ironed out by then, but like anyone who has had to deal with wrinkles, the less they have to iron the better.
