Sunday Column: Bowl Opt-Outs Provide Chances for Penn State to Turn Important Pages

The knee-jerk reaction from many fans when a player decides to pass on his final college season in favor of prepping for his potential pro career – a relatively recent phenomenon – is disappointment dressed up as approval, with a hint of sour grapes.

“Well, best of luck to him … he’ll need it.”

“I thought he could have benefited from one more college season, but I hope he does well.”

The natural next step of the early departure to the pros, of course, is saying farewell to the team not at the completion of the season but prior to the team’s bowl game, as Penn State’s Brandon Smith and Ellis Brooks did recently. (Others, including Jahan Dotson, Rasheed Walker, and Jaquan Brisker, could make the same call prior to the Nittany Lions’ New Year’s Day Outback Bowl date with Arkansas).

The fan reactions to those decisions are essentially variations of the above, but are sometimes accompanied by rhetorical questions like “Don’t they owe it to their teammates to finish the season?” or “Wouldn’t they want one more college game?”

Again, the disappointment is understandable – fans want their team to win each time it takes the field, and the loss of key players will, all else equal, make a bowl win that much more difficult to obtain. But although Penn State taking the field in Tampa with a different cast of characters than it had in November might make it more likely the Nittany Lions finish a disappointing season 7-6 than 8-5, it is also likely it will make them a better team in 2022.

Look, if the Nittany Lions were prepping for a playoff game, or even a New Year’s Six contest, it would be a different story. Year-end rankings can be used to sway a recruit (not much of an issue for Penn State at the moment), secure a coach’s status (even less of an issue for just-extended James Franklin) and even give a team a leg up on the preseason rankings (there’s some validity to this one, but Penn State’s first six games of 2022 will show if it is a top 10 team or an also-ran regardless of where it’s ranked in August).

But the Outback Bowl, though a well-run event in a cool stadium (shoutout to the 10:30 a.m. press box bloomin’ onion) that usually provides a compelling enough Big Ten-SEC matchup, is not a game that will define a season. Nor is it a game that will provide momentum, one way or the other, for the following fall. Why? Because the 2022 squad will be a different team. And if you’re a coach, why wouldn’t you want the lineup for the bowl game to more closely resemble the lineup for the 2022 opener than the lineup for the 2021 Michigan State game?

Sure, the departures of Brooks and Smith mean the Nittany Lions will be a lot greener, and if we’re being honest, less productive at linebacker against an Arkansas attack that ranks 12^th in the nation in rushing (even if Jesse Luketa slides back to linebacker, which will weaken an already thin defensive front). But are more reps in both bowl practices and the game for Curtis Jacobs, Kobe King and Tyler Elsdon, who could see increased roles next year, a bad thing? Not at all. If you’re Manny Diaz, who will be charged with not only taking over the whole defense but with developing the linebacking corps, would you rather evaluate players who won’t be on the team next year during bowl practices or those who will?

No Jahan Dotson will almost assuredly make Penn State’s hit-or-miss offense far less dynamic and probably less consistent. But seeing Parker Washington step into the No. 1 role, KeAndre Lambert-Smith into the No. 2 role and which young receivers (Malick Meiga? Jaden Dottin? Liam Clifford?) might slide in behind them for the bowl game would help set the stage for next season, when Penn State will also welcome Western Kentucky transfer Mitchell Tinsley. We got a taste of what the offensive line will look like without Walker during the Michigan State game, but again, if he does indeed go, those extra reps will benefit the likes of Landon Tengwall and Olu Fashanu.

Typically, younger players are given more work during bowl prep than they might during the regular season, even if they don’t see as much run during the game itself. More of these younger players will have to see run in this bowl game out of necessity, though, and game reps against an athletic Razorbacks side (which will be without stud receiver Treylon Burks, who opted out himself), will foster their development, even if it might not always be terribly fun to watch. And if the young players struggle, that could give the coaches a better idea of exactly what they’ll need to mine from the transfer portal and/or more incentive to burn some redshirts in the impressive Class of 2022.

If Penn State’s early departures take advantage of the extra month, show out at the combine, and hear their names called at the draft, it will not only validate those decisions but add more feathers to Franklin’s player development cap. And even if it’s a relatively quiet weekend for those players in April, the practice reps they vacated in December will be more important than any contributions they might have made on Jan. 1.