“I’m a very patient guy,” Penn State receivers’ coach Marques Hagans said after practice earlier this week. “I love puzzles, I can do a 3000-5000 piece puzzle, so I’ve got patience.”
It’s fitting that Hagans enjoys the challenge of finding all the right pieces to make a complete picture since that’s basically the struggle of coaching. For Penn State football there is ample optimism around the pieces that it does have – a team which boasts one of the nation’s best defenses and one of the better 1-2 running back punches in the game. Add in the promise of a young quarterback and the Nittany Lions’ No. 7 ranking is a well earned starting point for the marathon that lies ahead.
But Penn State isn’t without questions that will shape the success or failures of its upcoming season. A puzzle in its own right, Hagans’ receiver room is one of the bigger unknowns this team is itching to find clarity with.
Because the word “consistency” has been thrown around a lot this spring and summer in a way that hasn’t projected a ton of enthusiasm in this receiving group. While one might chalk up a less than glowing review as simple public motivation, head coach James Franklin and Hagans haven’t exactly gone out of their way to heap praises on a room of relatively unproven players. In total Penn State brings back around 23% of its receptions from last season with 61 receptions spanning over the stat lines of seven different receivers. While the optimism might be well deserved, so too the feelings of uncertainty that come with needing to rely on a bevy of unproven players. This is particularly true for a program that has had the benefit of a well established and unquestioned No. 1 option for the better part of the last six to eight years, now facing a team with a lot of potential but no obvious and clearly established answer.
“[But being patient] doesn’t mean I’m not going to hold those guys accountable to the standard,” Hagans added. “And it doesn’t mean that I’m going to allow the same mistakes over and over again, I’m very patient but it does have a limitation. I think we’re in a good spot. I think we have a good group of guys but there’s nothing that’s set in stone. So I would say that we have a group of guys competing and it’s just going to play out throughout the whole season. And the best guys that give us the best chance to win, those will be the guys that will be in the rotation week in and week out.”
Of course there is the positive side to having a lot of options on the table – there’s no shortage of players who might end up being the answer to these problems. Kent State transfer Dante Cephas is still easing into his new role on campus while KeAndre Lambert-Smith is hoping that his strong end of season play will turn him into a more consistent threat. The likes of Omari Evans, Liam Clifford, Trey Wallace and Kaden Saunders all have shown promising flashes but with 34 career receptions between the four players it’s hard to know what you’ve got until the rubber hits the road.
“I think like kids on a bike, you never know what you got until you take off the training wheels,” Hagans said. “And so I think the guys have been working hard to establish who they are. And we won’t really know for sure until we get in the game and that’ll kind of reveal itself and I think over time guys become who they become. But right now we got a bunch of guys that are eager to prove [themselves.] So there’s a lot of things we got to find out about this group and those guys and that’s what this first game will give us the opportunity to do. I think we have a good baseline [of what they can do.] Now we gotta find out if they can do it in the game.”
As for Cephas, how quickly he can transition to the next level is still a work in progress in its own right. While now former Nittany Lion Mitchell Tinsley was able to make the switch from Western Kentucky to Penn State with relative ease, Cephas is yet to get quite the same rave reviews – albeit with the season still not yet underway.
Even if Cephas isn’t the guy Penn State is hoping someone can step into that role. Parker Washington led Penn State in 2022 with 611 receiving yards prior to his eventual injury. Since 1990 Penn State has had a leading receiver go for fewer than 611 yards on six occasions, posting a 39-33 record over that span. A running back room boasting Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen might be able to mitigate a lackluster passing game to a certain extent the duo of tight ends in Tyler Warren and Theo Johnson can help as well, but nothing can substitute to success that comes with a consistent receiving room.
“We’ve had some really good conversations,” Franklin said of Cephas after practice on Wednesday. “And I think he realizes that this has been different – the adjustments, especially with the DBs and the man-to-man coverage that we play. It’s just different. Not saying that he’s not a big time player [but] there’s a difference between getting up one or two days a week or one or two times a year a season and coming out here every single day with that type of competitiveness that you need to be successful. So it has been a really good adjustment for him. He’s handled it really well. And he’s part of that group, you know, that’s competing for those spots.”
In the end only time will tell what this group can become. Every great receiver was unproven at one point, but don’t be too surprised if this group is a work in progress and if that means the Nittany Lions take a little bit of time turning into the world beaters fans are hoping they truly are.
