Sunday Column: Blue-White Medley Saturday About Sharpening The Ax, Not Swinging It

The Blue-White Game is easy to take for granted. It has some of the perks of a game that counts – tailgating, a chance to yell at players (or coaches … or officials), a look at incredible athletes making plays mortals could only dream about, and uh, tailgating – without the possibility of a crushing defeat. Everybody plays, no one gets (actually) sacked, LaVar stops by to chat. It’s a great time for all ages.

At the same time, Penn State’s annual spring game, back in Beaver Stadium for the first time in three years on Saturday, is also the very definition of empty calories. That’s partially because no coach in his right mind wants to give any future opponent any hint of a playbook wrinkle, or risk anyone on his two-deep to injury, and partially because there are no bowl ramifications (at least not any that I’m aware of).

And yet, there are some things to watch for that can provide clues about the type of team the Nittany Lions have in any given year. You want to see proficiency. Guys don’t need to pancake a linebacker or making a diving interception, but you want to see them in the right spots and playing sound, fundamental football. You want to see the returning starters be a little bigger, stronger and more decisive than they were the previous November, sure, but you also want the likely backups to show that they’re capable of handling shotgun snaps filling in for an injured starter and not have the air go out of the entire unit.

That’s particularly true for the defense, which is learning Manny Diaz’s system this year, and of course for an offensive line that not only has plenty to atone for after a ragged 2021 season but has also dealt with a relative lack of healthy bodies for most of the spring. It helped the offense this spring that the Nittany Lions A) had the same offensive coordinator they had the spring before for the first time since 2019 and B) have a super-super-senior at quarterback.

It’s difficult, and not entirely responsible, to draw any hard conclusions about what the team will look like on autumn Saturdays based on any spring activity, whether it’s a scrimmage, thud, 7-on-7, or any sort of drill. The offense knows what the defense is doing, and vice versa, and it’s impossible to know what any player is going to do when he has to play in front of a live crowd until he, well, has to play in front of a live crowd.

But that doesn’t mean the reps we saw on Saturday, or those that came during any of the other dozen or so practices of the spring, aren’t important. They’re huge for building the type of consistency that separates the talented and polished teams from the talented but erratic teams. Being on the same page as your teammates in April doesn’t guarantee that you will be in August, let alone September, but football is, at its core, about building habits. If you can build good habits in the spring, you’ll have fewer bad habits to break as the season approaches.

From an individual standpoint, if a player can get a leg up on the teammates he’s competing against in the spring, it’ll be that much easier for him to keep that advantage in the summer, and that much easier for him to land that starting job in game one. Same goes for the coaches. The sooner guys have the basics down pat, whether that’s during the spring or during the summer, the sooner they can start to teach more intricate concepts. The more opportunities the coaches have to set expectations of what will and will not be accepted, the more seriously they’ll be taken when they have to hold a player accountable in the middle of the third quarter in Ann Arbor.

So what did we learn Saturday? As ever, there were highlight-reel plays, like impressive above-the-rim touchdown catches by Tre Wallace and Mason Stahl, both on passes from Christian Veilleux, and some of the Lions who will take on important roles in the offense, including transfer wideout Mitchell Tinsley and returning tailback Keyvone Lee, looked smooth and powerful. Freshman Nick Singleton catching passes out of the backfield was intriguing as well.

The more encouraging signs, though, came following the sort of mistakes that coaches hope not to see. Shortly after Lee was whistled for an illegal block on an apparent touchdown by Malick Meiga, KeAndre Lambert-Smith and Tyler Warren made excellent downfield blocks a few plays later to guide Tinsley into the end zone. After freshman specialist Gabe Nwosu drove a kickoff out-of-bounds, he responded with a Jordan Stout-esque punt. After rookie quarterback Drew Allar threw a very rookieish interception, he bounced back with some easy and accurate short and mid-range completions.

All of this is a long way of saying that the 2022 Penn State team should, not unlike the last few versions, have some fun pieces — with a few more on the way this summer – and that it has a long way to go. But most college teams have a long way to go this time of year, and what this group showed on a sunny afternoon was that it not only has enough talent to be a dynamic team but the willingness to work to put that talent to consistent, productive use. You can’t ask for more than that.

In April, at least.