Sunday Column: Returnees Will Help Penn State Usher In Year of Change

Early January is usually a time of breath-holding for college football coaches and fans, as they wait to learn whether some of their top players are going to return or leave school early to pursue NFL dreams. This month was no different for Penn State coaches and fans, but resulted mostly in long, satisfied exhales.

Four Nittany Lions who are likely to play significant roles in 2021 — Jahan Dotson, Rasheed Walker, Tariq Castro-Fields, Jaquan Brisker – recently announced their decisions to return, which was not only likely wise for each of those respective players but, in each case, will also make things easier for their other returning teammates during what will be a pivotal year in State College.

Yes, Jayson Oweh and Pat Freiermuth are heading to the draft with eligibility still in the tank, but both of those moves were essentially givens. Lamont Wade’s path to a high-round pick isn’t as clear-cut, but the veteran safety had played more than 40 games for Penn State, earned his degree, and has a young son to think about. It didn’t make a lot of sense for him to take advantage of the NCAA’s bonus year of eligibility.

For both Brisker and Castro-Fields, it does. Brisker was a very different player at the end of this past season than he was at its outset – more confident, more efficient and more disruptive against the run and the pass. It wouldn’t have been a shock to see him as a mid-round selection had he come out this year, but one more season of building on that momentum as part of what should be a strong Penn State secondary will only help his stock and, in turn, give Penn State a clear starter at a position that isn’t brimming with depth.

Penn State has significantly more depth at corner, but Castro-Fields’ return was more than welcomed just the same. He was arguably the group’s most dynamic player entering the 2020 season but missed the majority of it with an undisclosed injury. Putting him on one side of the field and burgeoning star Joey Porter Jr. on the other, with Brisker patrolling the middle, will give the secondary a much different look and much more playmaking ability than it would have had if both decided not to return.

Walker, one of the highest-rated recruits on the current roster, was one of the steadier parts of an offensive line that wasn’t exactly steady for much of 2020. With Michal Menet and Will Fries departing and C.J. Thorpe in the transfer portal, Wallace’s experience will be a big part of a retooled line that, again, would have looked a lot different had he decided to leave early.

The headliner of the group, and the player who will have an opportunity to be the headliner of the entire team next fall, is Dotson, who put together a breakout season – 52 catches for a Big Ten-best 884 yards and nine total touchdowns via receiving or returning – that is impressive even when you don’t consider Penn State’s inconsistent quarterback play, and nearly stunning when that’s factored in. In one sense, his decision to return was as savvy as his route-running – this draft is already loaded with big-time receiver prospects. Dotson will be likely to go several picks earlier next year if he doesn’t play a snap before then, and another year of working hard to eliminate the remaining weaknesses in his game should serve him well.

All four players had individual decisions to make, and it is important to remember that all four might have made alternative decisions, of course, had they received different feedback from NFL evaluators. A commonality among all four, though, is a desire to put a better product on the field than what Penn State did in 2020, and that kind of thing, though impossible to quantify, can go a long way in determining a team’s success.

So, yes, four good players coming back should make Penn State a better team, all else equal, than those four players not coming back (#hardhittinganalysis). But those players will provide stability, at the very least, at four of the 22 starting positions. That stability will be extremely helpful as the Nittany Lions learn yet another new offensive system,  and as a senior-deficient roster welcomes seven true freshmen and four incoming transfers to campus this month, with roughly a dozen more freshmen filing in later this year. The returnees will be expected not only to produce but also to show these new players the standard and pick up their slack.

There’s one more thing to consider. Even with a four-game winning streak to end the year, there remains a lot of mess to clean up from this past fall. Had one or two or all four of these returning players decided to leave, whatever their reasons might have been, it would have fed into the perception that the program is in turmoil instead of one that is ready to bounce back after a season that was an aberration. Dotson, Walker, Castro-Fields and Brisker are telling the rest of the college football world that it was the latter, not the former. And in a few months, they’ll have a chance to help prove it.