Try Saying That Headline Three Times Fast. Then, After You Fail Miserably, Sit Back and Read our Final Blog Entry of the Season While Untwisting Your Tongue 

Unless James Franklin finds another magic lamp to rub and the Genie within grants him three MORE practices sessions –  which is apparently what happened the Saturday before last – Penn State concluded its spring football schedule Friday night under the Beaver Stadium lights.  

If we’re taking Franklin at his word(s), Penn State either had a “very good spring” or a “great spring” since the adjective-obsessed head coach used both modifiers in the span of four sentences when delivering his opening statement. Regardless, it was A spring – a FULL spring of 15 practices – which in itself is a victory considering the cancellation of 2020’s spring football festivities led to the Nittany Lions stepping on rakes for five weeks last season. 

Franklin concluded his post-practice verbal appetizer by mentioning he’ll meet with every player one-on-one and provide feedback along with a voluntary To-Do List to complete before training camp begins in August. While he handles that on a micro level, we’ll get a bit more macro and rank Penn State’s position units as they currently stand…

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Friday night football in Beaver Stadium is not exactly normal.

But it helped Penn State take another important step back toward normalcy.

The coronavirus pandemic has not yet gone away, and it might very well still be around when the Nittany Lions open the season this September. They were nonetheless able to get a full slate of practices in this spring, culminating in Friday’s session open to media members, recruits, senior students, and (thanks to a spur-of-the-moment PR move that was either insane or genius) a few fans who spotted the ads for free tickets the team put out on Thursday night.

The fans who first came and were first served lucked out with the weather, a gorgeous sunset capping off a cool-but-not-cold April evening, and were treated to, by all accounts … well, another spring practice. Some highlight-reel plays, some head-scratchers, watered-down schemes, etc. Getting to watch football practice at a big-time program on occasion, as any reporter will tell you, is a treat; watching it on a regular basis is tedium.

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First rule of the Blue-White Game: Don’t draw any firm conclusions.

This Kalen King dude, though, isn’t leaving us with much choice.

The buzz around Penn State’s impressive freshman cornerback, which has been growing throughout the spring, approached Apache helicopter levels on Saturday during the Nittany Lions’ annual spring scrimmage/exhibition for freshmen students and media afternoon practice. King turned in a pick six and another interception – of presumptive starter Sean Clifford – in the end zone and made his presence felt as a blitzer as well.

Although it’s tempting and likely prudent to say that any performance in any spring game isn’t worth the paper this blog column isn’t printed on, Saturday was just another sign that King could soon be a force to be reckoned with on a Penn State defense that hasn’t had a lot of those forces recently.

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As we crawl closer to the Year 1 finish line of this largely sophomoric/sparsely informative venture, more than one Friend Of The Blog has inquired whether we ever foresee a day when FTB morphs into a legit journalistic entity – you know, with real reporters asking real questions, jotting down real quotes instead of us embedding 1990s Simpsons clips in our stories.  

The answer is an emphatic NO…for a few reasons. 

For starters, our site’s philosophy has always been (and will always be) to complement, not copy, Penn State’s existing beat coverage. Doesn’t make sense to do what dozens of other outlets are doing…and doing better than we ever could. So for traditional Penn State coverage, go to sources like Donnie Collins in Scranton, Audrey Snyder at The Athletic, Ben Jones in State College, and BoFlo, Pickel and discount college t-shirt enthusiast Dave Jones in Harrisburg. They all do an awesome job. 

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Penn State will hold its final spring football practice in a week. Most years, it’s called the Blue-White Game, and it’s attended by as many as 70,000 fans, who probably aren’t dying to see how the third-string left tackle looks or who will be the next Aric Heffelfinger as much as they are just looking to scratch a football itch as they wait for September.

This year, the details are foggier, but we know that Penn State freshmen will be allowed inside the stadium to watch this practice or game or scrimmage or whatever it’s going to be. For the rest of us, it’s an opportune time to consider how the Nittany Lions might tweak the format in future, pandemic-free years of what is usually, after the initial excitement of seeing dudes in helmets and pads wears off, a fairly dull afternoon.

Some humble suggestions, with reasons why they would and wouldn’t work:

 The 7 on 7

Quarterbacks slangin’ the tater. Receivers and corners squaring off in a running chess match. This format, which typically substitutes flags for live tackling, grates on traditionalists but there’s no denying the fast-paced appeal to both casual and knowledgeable fans.

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The trouble with consistently recruiting and developing pro talent is that you’re consistently having to replace it.

In a few weeks, Penn State will almost assuredly continue a three-year streak of having at least one defensive end selected in the NFL Draft. Jayson Oweh, last seen making jaws drop at Pro Day, is a possible first-round pick and will almost assuredly go in one of the first two rounds, and if Shaka Toney is also taken, which seems quite likely, it will mark four edge rushers drafted from one program in three years, which puts Penn State on par with anyone in the country.

Though that’s great for Oweh, Toney, Yetur Gross-Matos and Shareef Miller, and also continues a strong tradition for the Nittany Lions at the position that started under the tutelage of Larry Johnson and continued through Sean Spencer and now John Scott Jr., it leaves the current Penn State team in a potential bind at one of the most important positions in the college game.

There are currently 12 players listed as defensive tackles on Penn State’s roster, including veterans P.J. Mustipher and Fred Hansard, promising redshirt freshman Hakeem Beamon and Duke transfer Derrick Tangelo. By contrast, there are only nine defensive ends, including two walk-ons and only one scholarship player, Nick Tarburton, who has been with the program for more than two seasons.

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Football, when you think about it, is all about math.

Quarterbacks are judged on their completion percentage (or QBR), running backs on their yards per carry, offensive and defensive linemen on the mass they possess and the mass they can move around. Coaches, of course, on their ability to make the hundreds of little equations add up to a win each week.

One of Penn State’s most underrated equations – the ability of Dwight Galt and his strength staff to add size and speed and skill to raw talent and turn it into future talent – was on display again this week during the team’s pro day.

Micah Parsons, a likely top 10 draft choice and the inarguable No. 1 linebacker in the Class of 2021, ran a 4.39-second 40 – one-tenth of a second off the best-ever time by a linebacker at the combine, Shaquem Griffin’s 4.38 in 2018 – at 246 pounds, or 21 heavier than Griffin. And it wasn’t even the top time of the afternoon. That one was a 4.36 40, which belonged to defensive END Jayson Oweh, who ran it at 257 pounds. That time was five hundredths of a second better than Montez Sweat, at 260 pounds, posted at the combine two years ago, which was the fastest ever.

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FTB’s Rapid Reaction/Stream of Consciousness Following Two Hours of Watching Guys Mostly Stand Around

• Well, that’s a chunk of our lives we can’t get back. For those stuck at work wondering ‘What did I miss??!?!?!” first of all, calm down. You didn’t miss much of anything. Yes, Jayson Oweh ran a 4.4 40-yard dash that turned into a 4.37 that turned into a 4.36 (somehow), and yes, Micah Parsons ran a 4.41 that turned into a 4.35 that turned into a 4.39 (???) but easily the most impressive showing belonged to BTN’s Dave Revsine and Howard Griffith for masterfully filling air time when absolutely nothing was going on.

• Interesting stat: Since 2014 – James Franklin’s first year at Penn State – seven other Power 5 football teams have posted at least three 11-win seasons besides the Nittany Lions. Ohio State. Alabama. Oklahoma. Clemson. Georgia. TCU. Wisconsin. Of those teams, Penn State has produced the lowest number of 1st Round NFL Draft picks in that time – 1, Saquon Barkley. Honestly, I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Depends on how you spin it, I guess. Ohio State and Alabama are tied at the top with 16 1st Rounders. Clemson has 10. Georgia, 8. Oklahoma, 5. What’s surprising, though, is that TCU and Wisconsin have produced 4 and 3 1st Rounders, respectively.

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Frankly, Your Guess is as Good as Ours…

Are We Sure Noah Cain Will Be ‘Good To Go’ Sept. 4?

Fingers crossed it’s just a coincidence and we’re proven to be idiots (first time for everything, right?), but we’re 94.7 percent sure Noah Cain didn’t participate in winter workouts, meaning he’ll be sidelined for the entirety of spring practice. How did we arrive at such a precise number? Well, we just made it up…but there’s valid reason for concern about Cain’s status. 

Stealing a page from my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Collier’s playbook, Penn State position coaches doled out ‘Special Student of the Day’ Gold Stars on social media throughout winter workouts. Here’s one posted from PSU RB Coach Ja’Juan Seider’s Twitter account praising Devyn Ford’s effort while reminding us the federal eviction moratorium ends March 31:

Winter workout #4 #LawnBoyz of the day went @TsunamiFord. He brought that 🔥🔥🔥🔥today. #RentIsDue pic.twitter.com/HfB1Mpu7vf

— JaJuan Seider (@coachseider) February 25, 2021

Gold Star for Ford.

Gold Star for Keyvone Lee.

Three Gold Stars for Grad Transfer John Lovett.

But no Gold Star for Cain : ( 

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Spring is arriving in State College, which usually means just a little bit more daylight when you leave work or class at 5 p.m. … and it’s still 35 degrees outside.

Fortunately for the Penn State football program, that also means spring practice is arriving again after an extra-long hiatus. The Nittany Lions will open their 15 allotted spring practices on March 15, and they can’t come soon enough for a group that, for both understandable and still-inexplicable reasons, came nowhere near its potential last fall. 

Yes, with apologies to Allen Iverson and Ted Lasso, we talkin’ bout practice, man. But there are several areas where the Nittany Lions should directly benefit from those workouts – whether they include a Blue-White Game or not – after they missed out on them last spring.

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