Penn State seeks versatility, depth to prepare for schedule’s unknowns
Penn State head coach James Franklin has made clear his preference for keeping the conversation on what’s immediately ahead. And, in his recent media appearance ahead of the Nittany Lions’ annual Lift for Life event, he did as much by hammering home the importance for his program of simply beating West Virginia to open the season.
Franklin’s public stance is not a reflection of the program’s preparation this offseason, though.
Personally acknowledging after the Blue-White Game the attention Penn State is paying to a schedule that will feature three former PAC-12 opponents in Southern Cal, UCLA, and Washington, Franklin offered a window into the reality of the situation. Juggling a rapidly changing national college football landscape that includes each of those three opponents, Washington and UCLA hiring new coaching staffs and Southern Cal instigating changes of its own this offseason, the Nittany Lions are purposefully attempting a balancing act.
“I’m very much focused on the task at hand. Be present, be where your feet are, 1-0 mentality,” Franklin said. “I do think there’s an aspect that you want to look at these things and have an understanding and awareness. But, the challenge is, there’s so much turnover in college football with coaches, that it’s kind of hard to make predictions and really get an idea this time of year of who and what you’re going to face. Not only that, the roster could look so different in both directions back to what you were talking about. So you got to do some work on that.
“Some games on the schedule and the teams that were not as familiar with we haven’t played before. We will do some of that. But if you’re not careful, you’re going to spend so much time chasing these ghosts that may not present themselves in week eight that you mess up week one.”
Preparing for new possibilities
Meeting with reporters this month, Penn State football’s coordinators have echoed the sentiment.
Combining that balance of preparedness with a caution against losing sight of internal development’s precedence, the takeaway is straightforward. Needing to beat every team on the schedule, Andy Kotelnicki is all-in on developing an offense that can adapt, compete with, and conquer all of its opponents.
“We’ve looked at our opponents for next year. The reality is, if you want to play championship-level football, you got to be good. You got to be a good defense, you got to be a good offense, you got to be good on special teams. And you got to beat good teams,” said Kotelnicki. “And so one of the first things that we had done in the spring, and we’re doing going into the summer, ‘Who are our best opponents? What are they doing on defense? We’re studying them, we’re looking at them, we’re evaluating them, we’re trying to figure out and make sure that schematically we’re doing things that are going to beat them.”
Asked about the versatility of the defensive ends and defensive backs that could form the core of Tom Allen’s first unit with the Nittany Lions, the new defensive coordinator shared a similar stance. Prepared to take on the same opponents Allen familiarized himself with while at Indiana for the past eight years, the influx of the West Coast teams is one he said demands versatility.
“You better have a system that can adapt to that,” Allen said. “We got a lot of DBs that have multiple skill sets, to where you can mix and match those pieces, which just helps you in a long season. You’re gonna have to play different guys and things happen. You can’t plan for all that.
“So I just think that allows us to be able to… they can’t zero in on certain guys and be in certain positions all the time. You move them around, take advantage of that, and it makes it harder for the offense to kind of target you in regards to where people are going to be.”
Next steps for Penn State
Spending the summer preparing for the variety of possibilities that exist, Kotelnicki is carrying forward a mindset to permeate the program this offseason. Injecting a heavy dose of “underdog” into the 12 regular season games that Penn State will play during its 2024 campaign, his ultimate hope is for readiness.
“I am approaching this as though we shouldn’t beat anybody. That’s the mentality that I want to have,” said Kotelnicki. “We’re never just going to be able to go out there and… ‘Okay, we could just do this and this and win this game.’ That could happen that way. But you can’t plan that way. Bill Walsh said, ‘You should never reduce the game to the point where you just blame the players for not physically overwhelming their opponent.’
“It’s a profound quote when you think about it. There are a lot of people that do that. And when you can do that, that’s okay. That’s good coaching. But what happens when you can’t? And if all you do is prepare your whole life and your whole season like you’re just going to be able to allow your players to physically overwhelm them at all positions, then when you get to a situation when you’re playing some really good football teams that have the answers, you better have some things to help your kids out. So we’re always going to operate under the assumption that we do things to help our players execute.”
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The post Penn State seeks versatility, depth to prepare for schedule’s unknowns appeared first on On3.
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