Sunday Column: So-So Recruiting Haul Reflective of Shuffled Staff 

So the final results are in for Penn State’s Class of 2021. And they’re … not great, at least not by recent standards. The Nittany Lions’ 16 signees gave them the 21st-best class in the nation according to the 247Sports Composite Team Rankings, representing the program’s lowest ranking since 2014, when James Franklin wrapped up the 24th-ranked class in just his fourth week on the job.

When you consider not so much the circumstances but just how many different people were involved in assembling that class, though, it becomes a little more impressive.

This past week, tight ends coach Tyler Bowen took a job with the Jacksonville Jaguars, becoming the 13th Penn State assistant to leave the program – willingly or otherwise – since the end of the 2015 season. His replacement, former Nittany Lion offensive lineman Ty Howle, became the program’s sixth new assistant coach since the end of the 2019 season. Of the eight assistant coaches who came with Franklin to State College from Vanderbilt in 2014, only Brent Pry remains (as does Terry Smith, who was not with them at Vanderbilt but joined the Penn State staff that year).

That is a considerable amount of turnover, even for a profession that forces coaches and their families to learn to pack quickly, and even for a program that continues to see its former assistants climb the ladder as Franklin’s have.

Bowen and Sean Spencer are both in the NFL. Charles Huff is now directing his own program, in his first month as Marshall’s head coach. Ricky Rahne just wrapped up one year at Old Dominion, though he hasn’t yet coached a game due to the pandemic. Josh Gattis was co-offensive coordinator at Alabama before removing the “co” as coordinator at Michigan.

All of those promotions are good optics for the program, and have to be personally gratifying for Franklin, Pry, Smith and others, like strength coach Dwight Galt, who worked with those men for years. But the increasing numbers of comings and goings, while likely tiresome for the team’s current players, also has to be hell on recruiting.

Recruiting, clichés be damned, is about relationships – connections coaches form with prospects before they commit, after they’ve committed but have yet to sign, and once they’re on the team. There are of course several other factors that go into recruits’ decisions – chance for playing time, offensive fit, the program’s competitive history and history of developing NFL players, campus facilities, geography – hell, even academics – but if your primary recruiter or secondary recruiter or both are gone by the time prospects need to finalize what at the time is the biggest decision of their lives, it’s a big deal.

So while he’s legitimately been happy for his friends and colleagues advancing their careers, Franklin has been in scramble mode for much of the last few years, not only to find competent talent to fill those spots and coach his team but to keep the recruiting bus moving straight ahead and on schedule. The Nittany Lions have seen 13 players decommit in the last four classes, including 2022 tight end Holden Staes not long after Bowen left this week. That’s not bad, all things considered (Ohio State has had 11 decommits over the same time frame; Michigan 15 and Alabama 18) and it’s hard to tie very many directly to any of the specific coaching changes.

At the same time, Penn State was unable to lock up many of its biggest targets in the most recent class, including in-state blue-chippers Nolan Rucci, Derrick Davis Jr., and Elijah Jeudy. Again, other factors contributed in each case, but the merry-go-round of assistant coaches could not have made it easy for the Nittany Lions to put in the multiple-year legwork – at least not with the same faces – it can often take to close elite recruits. 

Both of Franklin’s last two hires were illustrative of the common options head coaches have when it comes to assistants. Howle, like Bowen, had some previous experience with the program as a lower-level assistant (he was an offensive analyst last year) and, like Bowen, had some experience at other programs. He could be a fast-riser in the business, as Bowen is, but seems more likely to put down roots with his alma mater and provide some continuity to a staff (see above) that could use some of it. Contrast his hire to that of new offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich, who will likely be a head coach within the next two or three years but is arguably also the assistant on staff most likely to have a seismic impact on the program.

This column started by pointing out the relatively low ranking of the Class of 2021, but it must also be mentioned that Penn State’s Class of 2022, currently seven commitments deep, is ranked fourth in the nation, with four of those commitments ranked among the top eight in Pennsylvania. Time will tell, but it seems the Nittany Lions at least broke even in the transfer market. All this, after a 4-5 season. Franklin can still recruit and, more importantly, he can still find assistant coaches who can, too.

If he doesn’t have to keep replacing them at such a furious rate, it stands to reason Penn State’s recruiting should continue to trend in the right direction.