The first point is the most important.
“I don’t need to prove anything to anybody,” Penn State receiver Julian Fleming says with a smile.
That is, for better or worse, sort of the crux of the story, though. Fleming — a Pennsylvania native, a former five-star recruit and a former Penn State target — is finally making his way to State College for one final season of college football after a career spent at Ohio State. A year from now, his story at the collegiate level will be written, and that story will end, broadly, one of two ways.
One is that Fleming turned into the player people anticipated he could become, a centerpiece of a Penn State offense en route to an appearance in the newly expanded College Football Playoffs. He may have shown up later than fans may have wanted, but he got there right exactly when he was needed.
The other is that he will join a list of former five-star prospects who had perfectly fine careers but also never quite lived up to expectations.
It’s a curse, in a lot of ways, to be labeled as something so early in your career and wear that crown for the rest of it. Nobody puts the same pressure on three- or four-star players. Whatever happens, happens. But with a five-star talent, you better be everything everyone said you’d be. Maybe at some point people stop really caring; if you’re good, you’re good. But that doesn’t mean the pressure doesn’t exist.
“Everybody expects a lot,” Fleming said, looking back at the early days of coming into college as a highly rated prospect. “And it kind of puts an extra sense of pressure on you. I would say that’s how I felt at least, there was always a little bit of external pressure that, ‘Man, I gotta do this or I got to do that or this has to happen for this to happen.’ And looking back now, that was really never the case. Everyone has a different journey. And my path has obviously been a little bit different so far than a lot of other people’s, but you just got to embrace that journey.”
“These star system are literally a comparison of you to a bunch of other players. That framework is already there to make you want to sit there and compare and say, ‘Oh, I’m better at this or I’m not as good at that,’ but in the grand scheme of things, you don’t need to compare yourself to anybody.”
To say that Fleming’s career has been a flop is a bit unfair to him. Between Chris Olave and Marvin Harrison Jr., Fleming was forced to sit behind two of the great receivers in modern college football. Not being as good as those two isn’t a failure; couple their talent with Fleming’s injury history and you’re left with a lot of waiting and not too much else. And in fairness, 79 receptions (13 of those coming against Michigan or in the playoffs), 963 yards and seven touchdowns isn’t nothing.
Does it make you question things, though? Sitting behind players like that. Does it make you — as you spend every day with two generational talents — question yourself. Absolutely. But then at some point you have to let it go. Otherwise it will eat you up.
“I would say every football player, every college athlete has thought like, ‘Man, maybe this isn’t for me,’” Fleming said. “I’m guilty 100% [of that]. Like I’ve had that thought ‘Man maybe this just isn’t it, or maybe I’m not what I thought I was,’ but sometimes you just gotta trust that you are where you are for a reason.
“You’ve just got to maximize every opportunity… one of our coaches said it the other day, that comparison is the thief of joy, so sitting there trying to compare myself to, you know, a bunch of other receivers around the country, I don’t want to say it’s a waste, but I feel like that’d be detrimental because then you’re gonna feel like you’re always lesser than or then you feel you’re always better than somebody else. So I just tried to stay away from that and, like I said, if I could come out and be the best version of myself every single day, I’m going to be happy about it.”
The good news for Fleming is that, with the departure of fellow receiver KeAndre Lambert-Smith, the need Penn State will have for guys like Fleming, Trey Wallace, Omari Evans and Kaden Saunders to step up has only heightened. Fleming will get his opportunity, finally, what he makes of it will be up to him.
On film, Fleming is long, physical and has the hands to get the job done. The thing that might make the difference though are the experiences and knowledge that he can pass on. Because sure, maybe Fleming hasn’t quite had the career he or anyone else might have expected, but he has been to places Penn State wants to go and he has lived in a culture that knows how to get there on a regular basis.
So is there a secret?
“I would say there are two, three main things,” Fleming said. “One is details. Another one is consistency. The third one — there are so many different things — but I would say the last is probably toughness … because this is a tough sport. There’s no sugarcoating that you’re gonna get hit. You’re gonna hit people. You’re gonna get banged up. You’re gonna have to play through being hurt. You’re gonna have to do stuff that you don’t want to do every single day.
“And then that toughness part is very important to consistency. You have to be able to do it day in and day out. You have to bring it every single Saturday; it has to be the best version of you. That has to be your aim. You’ve got to be ready to go. And the details, no one understands, like the smallest thing, especially on offense, one person can mess up and that can mess up a whole play.”
What Penn State does with that information remains to be seen. Playing hard and playing consistently isn’t exactly rocket science, but yet another voice hammering it home can’t be a bad thing for a program always so close and yet so far away.
Like most of Fleming’s career, it’ll be unfair to pin it all on his shoulders. He does have a former five-star teammate as a running back and a former five-star quarterback throwing him passes.
And maybe that’ll be the piece of advice he can give all of them above all else. Forget what people said they thought you should do or could do. Just go play. Because you don’t need to prove anything to anyone. Of course, that’s always easier said than done.
