PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz — David Dunn didn’t know how much weight he could bench until he attempted his limit. That’s from the movie, “Unbreakable,” a scene Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki connects to the ups and downs of a football season. That a team does not know how much adversity it can withstand until it’s faced with adversity.
It’s one of the key ingredients in the recipe of creating a national-title contender. And Kotelnicki may not know what it takes to win it all at the highest level of college football. But his two Division III national championships at Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2013 and 2014, two seasons in which his Warhawks compiled a combined 30-0 record, are nothing to gloss over.
The recipe stays the same, whether at the high school, college or professional level. Some Nittany Lions know what the perfect dish tastes like. They’ve won championships before. And ahead of Tuesday’s Fiesta Bowl against Boise State, a College Football Playoff quarterfinal, they believe the formula has been aced. It’s nearly time to serve it to the college football world.
“They had a group of guys who played together. They had a team that got better every week. They improved weekly,” Kotelnicki said of his Wisconsin-Whitewater title teams. “They had good line play on both sides of the ball. They had a supplement of skill players on both sides of the ball that could flash and make plays that everyone noticed and acknowledged. But it was still rooted in great box play — d-line, linebackers, o-line, tight ends, running backs.”
“Having been on those teams before, that’s what they had and that’s what I’d like to think we have.”
It started in spring ball. A.J. Harris had just transferred to Penn State from Georgia. He remembers pushing the sleds until failure. He pushed and pushed until he could no longer stand. Harris collapsed on the field, and two teammates, Zakee Wheatley and Zion Tracy, helped him off. They wanted to finish the workout alongside their new teammate.
Harris may not have been a part of the Bulldogs’ 2022 national championship team, but he felt the culture of that program the following year, his true freshman season. He knows better than almost any other Nittany Lion player what that mentality looks and feels like. And it feels like being guided off the practice turf by teammates after a grueling workout.
“You could see how everybody was interacting with everybody. Every time somebody made a play, tap on the helmet, showing everybody love,” Harris said. “And to me, that’s what I saw at Georgia. So, it looked familiar to me. It looked right.”
This culture only grew as the season unfolded. Harris’ relationship with the rest of his teammates developed as they played alongside each other, battling together after a loss to Ohio State, during comeback bids at USC and Wisconsin, and, most memorable, executing a trick play at Minnesota that all but sealed the team’s bid for the College Football Playoff.
The Nittany Lions kept increasing the weight of the adversity they could bench without knowing exactly what their limit was. They took a page out of Dunn’s book.
Phil Trautwein, the team’s offensive line coach, has seen this same story play out on the nation’s brightest stage. He was an integral member of Florida’s 2006 and 2008 national title teams. Trautwein remembers how essential a loss to Auburn and one-point wins over Tennessee and South Carolina ultimately were in the trek toward the top of the mountain.
“It builds confidence, because you don’t have to play perfect to win,” Trautwein said. “Someone’s gonna step up. In every single game, someone steps up. Special teams stepped up one time, offense has stepped, defense has stepped up. We’re always relaxed. We know that we have each other’s backs. We’re going to do whatever we need to do.”
Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Allen’s three state championships at Indiana’s Ben Davis High School and a quarterfinal finish at Division III’s Wabash are the pinnacle of his experience as a winning football coach. The level of competition may differ, but Allen said the process of winning a championship at any level is “very similar.”
It takes having an elite defense and a quarterback that can make something out of nothing. It takes running the football efficiently and stopping the run just as well. Those are the aspects of the game that, Allen said, stand the test of time. When you mix those attributes with a culture that appreciates adversity, that’s when teams find the most success.
“You have to be tested by fire. You have to have things that draw the team together, where they learn to trust each other, other guys have to step up when guys go down,” Allen said. “It just steers your team together, and it builds a confidence and a bond that can become unbreakable. I think that’s what I see on this team and what excites me so much about where we’re at right now.”
