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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Introduction

Welcome to Part 2 of our in-depth look at Penn State’s defense since the promotion of Brent Pry to Defensive Coordinator in 2016. In Part 1 we analyzed the Nittany Lions’ performance in standard statistical categories and compared those numbers against the rest of the Big Ten over the past 5 seasons (2016 – 2020). The main takeaway was that the “bend, don’t break” reputation that the Penn State defense has earned recently is deserved. Pry’s group tends to give up a fair number of total yards but does an excellent job of preventing teams from scoring and limiting big plays (the low YPP). Additionally, Pry’s teams have been better than average on 3rd down and generating Havoc plays in the form of sacks, tackles for loss, and fumbles. 

Today, we will take a deeper look at the defensive performance in some of the more advanced statistical measurements. Again, all stats herein are only for conference games from 2016-2020. 

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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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MARYLAND – Nov. 6, Maryland Stadium

Feels weird typing ‘Poor Mike Locksley’ when you consider he’s still employed and handsomely compensated despite his 8-43 career record as a head coach, but, man, it’s really hard to not feel a little bit sorry for this guy. 

After pasting Penn State 35-19 and posting that admittedly clever ‘You Were…We Are’ graphic on social media, Maryland’s burgeoning sand castle got washed away when a wave of COVID infections spread throughout the program. More than half of the Terrapins’ remaining schedule vanished – along with any and all 2020 momentum — because of positive tests/mandatory quarantine rules, as Locksley’s crew participated in a Big Ten-worst five total games.  

Then, Locksley’s entire coaching staff (or close to it) peace’d out for what seem like demotions elsewhere. 

Defensive coordinator Jon Hoke left to take the DBs coaching job with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons. 

Offensive coordinator Scottie Montgomery felt becoming the RBs coach for the Indianapolis Colts was the best career move for him. 

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