Editor’s Note: Every Monday Evening From Now Until the End of Spring Ball, FTB Unpacks All the Interesting/Unique/Quirky Play Calls We Saw During Mike Yurcich’s 1^st Season as the Nittany Lions’ OC

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With 11:25 remaining and Penn State clinging to a precarious 1-point lead over Auburn, life imitated Electronic Arts.

If the design of Brenton Strange’s slow-footed trot to the 2 – arguably the funkiest play in a Barnum & Bailey three-ring Whiteout that had failed fat-man fake punts, phantom Intentional Groundings, and a down that POOF vanished into thin air — looked familiar in the moment, well then there’s a good chance that you, like us, wasted too many days playing EA’s old NCAA Football video game franchise.

Indeed, “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game.”

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Signing Day has come and gone. Spring practice is still two weeks away. In some ways, it’s the slow season for Penn State football, but in others, there is no time of year that isn’t important. Right now, coaches and players are compiling and checking things off various lists – lists of exercises to complete in the weight room for the players, lists of practices to schedule and of recruits to woo for the coaches.

Writers, of course, love lists. And while there’s still a long way to go before we have a true semblance of a two-deep, it’s never too early to type out a list of a few areas that could be scale-tippers for a team that was all-too-often on the razor’s edge between wins and losses in 2021.

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Penn State has few recruiting showcases as effective as an autumn White Out game. One of them takes place in Indianapolis this week.

Eight Nittany Lions will be among the 300-plus NFL prospects at the league’s annual combine, a sneak preview of another NFL Draft that promises to have strong Penn State representation. For all the baffling struggles the Lions have had on the field the last couple of seasons, they have continued to produce – and develop – a significant number of professionals.

This year, that combine list includes Jahan Dotson, the sticky-handed wide receiver who probably would have been a Day 2 pick in the 2021 draft but decided to return for another season to help his team (which was in need of more help than even he could provide) and to continue to develop his own game (which he did). He’ll likely go at the end of Round 1 this spring, even in what is another deep wide receiver group.

It includes Jaquan Brisker, the former Lackawanna College safety who came on strong at the end of 2020 then had a tremendous final season this fall, showing skills in coverage, physicality and instincts as a tackler, and versatility. Another transfer, defensive end Arnold Ebiketie, was a productive player at Temple but turned a lot of heads against stiffer Big Ten competition this fall and, like Brisker, was a key catalyst for a vastly improved Penn State defense. He likely earned himself a jump of numerous spots up the draft board this season. Jordan Stout, tasked with filling the shoes of a punter who is now starting in the league (Blake Gillikin), stands a very good chance of becoming the first Penn State punter selected in the draft since John Bruno in 1987.

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They can’t all be Saquon Barkley.

Nick Scott figured that out during his second season at Penn State, when he switched from running back to safety. Six years later, the seventh-round draft choice will start for the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl, the latest – but probably not the last – in a decent-sized line of Nittany Lions who took non-traditional journeys to productive NFL careers.

There might have been something in the water in that 2014 recruiting class, James Franklin’s first at Penn State. Sure, there were stars then who remain stars now – Chris Godwin, Mike Gesicki – but there were many more players in that class who had to take a leap of faith, a huge swallow of pride or a hard look at the path they thought they were on for their paths to continue.

Scott’s Rams teammate, linebacker Troy Reeder, seemed destined to add to the legacy of Linebacker U after a redshirt freshman season that put him on the Big Ten’s All-Freshman team. And then he transferred – and this was before transferring was cool – to … Delaware. A three-time All-CAA selection, he joined the Rams as an undrafted rookie free agent in 2019 and has started 30 games – including each of the team’s last five playoff appearances – over the last three seasons.

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Penn State Punctuates its Two-Week Binge on Offensive Lineman by Adding an Experienced ‘Plug-and-Play’ Contributor

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Ah, The Ivy League…or as it has come to be known inside the Lasch Building, Lackawanna College Northeast.

For the second straight season, a rather large student-athlete has used his time playing football within this coalition of safety schools as a springboard to tackle the athletic and academic rigors of Penn State.

Last year, it took two disjointed series vs. Wisconsin for Harvard grad transfer Eric Wilson to unseat Anthony Whigan as the Nittany Lions’ left guard, a post he didn’t relinquish for the remainder of the season. This year, it’s Cornell offensive tackle Hunter Nourzad whose recent decision to pick Penn State over offers from Iowa, Illinois, Auburn and Virginia Tech not only further fortifies the burgeoning Ivy League-to-Happy Valley pipeline but also provides Phil Trautwein a dependable and accomplished replacement to fill one of three holes on the Nittany Lions’ offensive line in 2022.

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In the Wild West of Modern College Athletics, Progressive Legislation Gov. Tom Wolf Signed into Law Last Summer to Benefit Student-Athletes Could Already Be Doing More Harm than Good for the Nittany Lions

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Politically speaking, Article XX-K of PA Senate Bill 381 – an amendment to the Public School Code that permitted college athletes to profit off their Name, Image, or Likeness (NIL) – was a slam dunk on a 7-foot rim.

On June 30, 2021, Pennsylvania became the 25^th state to join the popular/mostly bipartisan movement of neutering one aspect of the NCAA’s draconian amateurism provisions when Gov. Tom Wolf’s signature assured Penn State athletes could partake in the same money-making opportunities as college players in other states that already passed NIL legislation. At the time, these various state NIL laws – many of which were scheduled to go into effect two days later – offered student-athletes protection from potential NCAA violations, a luxury that student-athletes in states without NIL laws didn’t possess…yet.

Two weeks later, Wolf figuratively spiked the football by holding a press conference inside Beaver Stadium’s Club Section where — surrounded by Penn State athletes, coaches, and administrators — he told the press, “This step toward fairness for athletes aligns with changes taking place in other states…It will also help to ensure that Pennsylvania colleges and universities remain competitive to future athletic prospects.”

Yeah, um, so about that, Tom…

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Two things can be true of Penn State’s offensive line in 2021:

1. The line wasn’t as bad as you thought it was. Yes, this was statistically the worst Nittany Lion offense in – squints at notes, winces – seven years, and oh yes, the line played its part, but the blame for the lack of production must be shared, from the tight ends who whiffed on blocks to the head-scratching short-yardage play calls to the open receivers Sean Clifford missed badly.
2. The line was still pretty damned bad.

The good news is that – on paper on recruiting rankings lists, anyway – help is on the way.

Saturday’s commitment from Jven Williams made the pride of Wyomissing the fourth offensive lineman prospect to join Penn State’s Class of 2023, on the heels of the four more offensive linemen the Nittany Lions added in the Class of 2022. Williams (ranked 96^th overall in 2023), Alex Birchmeier (31 in 2023), and Drew Shelton (121 in 2022) are all ranked among the top 150 overall prospects in their respective classes per the 247Composite ratings (2022 lineman JB Nelson, who enrolled last month, was the No. 2 overall junior-college prospect).

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Pro football’s GOAT QB, some pretty boy from Michigan, decided to retire this week (we think), a few days after one of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ all-time greats called it a wrap, which made me consider a few of Penn State’s all-time greats who were in the news this month, for one reason or another.

Russ Rose retired in December after 43 seasons of leading the Penn State women’s volleyball team and an NCAA-record 1,330 wins. Cael Sanderson continued what has been an unbelievable ride at the helm of the school’s wrestling program, as his No. 1 Nittany Lions took down hated rival and No. 2 Iowa on Friday night. And last week, fans mourned the 10th anniversary of the death of Joe Paterno, who won more games than any football coach in FBS/Division I-A history.

Three true greats there, to be sure. But which of them deserves the mantle of Greatest Penn State coach of all time (GPSCOAT)?

First, we should probably define the metrics of what makes a coach great. Is it the number of times they reached the summit of their sport? Paterno won two national titles in 46 seasons, compared to seven in 43 for Rose and eight – and counting – in 11 for Sanderson. However, the respective competition they faced must be considered.

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In college football, as is the case with many things in life, the more work you put in, the better the result usually – but not always – turns out to be.

In this sport, though, you need to be patient to see those results.

Penn State is hosting an important recruiting weekend for its Class of 2023 … but it will likely be no earlier than 2025 until those prospects (if of course they wind up at Penn State) will play significant roles on the field. The flip side of that, of course, is that the players who will likely shoulder the heaviest part of the load for the Nittany Lions in 2022 will come from the classes of 2019 and 2020.

And that leads us to what has been a not-so-minor issue for the Nittany Lions during these last two seasons of football purgatory; Penn State is putting together solid-to-strong recruiting classes on the front end, but not getting enough out of those classes by the time the players leave.

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Exit No. 5 – Enter No. 5 as Strength, Speed and Sure Hands Arrives in One Package with Penn State’s Newest Roster Addition.

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Apparently this is gonna be a thing.

Twelve months after he absolutely electrified Penn State’s hesitant-to-change fanbase by simply catching up to speed with the rest of the sport, James Franklin has once again stepped foot in Transfer Portal – College Football’s bargain bin – and already crossed ‘WR1’ from his off-season shopping list.

Like most of Franklin’s 2020-2021 portal rescues, former Western Kentucky stat gobbler Mitchell Tinsley fits a certain profile. Recruiting stars deficient (Derrick Tangelo). Limited college offers out of high school (Eric Wilson). Late bloomer physically who outgrew his Outlet Mall irregular measurables from high school, sprouted into an impact overachiever at the college level, and is now eager to see if he can shine just as bright on a bigger stage (Arnold Ebiketie).

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