Inside the Den: Penn State preseason practice news, notes, and observations

Five practices into Penn State’s 2021 preseason camp, quarterback Sean Clifford was asked what he’d learned from his 2020 experience.

A brutal year in which Clifford entered with high hopes, only to see them dashed so severely en route to an 0-5 start, the fifth-year senior has since turned the page. In fact, as of his post-practice media appearance Wednesday night, Clifford has turned the page, shut the cover, taken the book to a landfill, and torched the whole property.

“I’m going to be honest with you,” Clifford said. “I will not be talking about last season anymore. I appreciate the question, but I won't. It's 2021, so we're gonna move on.”

So too is the entire Penn State football program as it continues its preparations for the 2021 season.

Opening the gates to the Lasch Football Complex Wednesday afternoon, the media was permitted to witness about 25 minutes on the front end of the Nittany Lions’ practice, then reconvened virtually for Zoom interviews with head coach James Franklin, safeties coach Anthony Poindexter, cornerback Joey Porter Jr., and Clifford.

Some news, notes, and observations as the first week of Penn State’s preseason practices roll along:

RELATED: August 11 Penn State preseason practice quick hitters

1) We’ve been talking about it all summer, and now Sean Clifford is talking about it too.

Though having struggled with his on-field performance in 2020 and his handling of the pressures that ensued, Clifford has been talked about throughout the program as being in a much better place this offseason. Certainly, that’s a headspace thing, Clifford acknowledging as much in a June interview with BWI that he had been on the rollercoaster and come out of it with a clarity of mission and focus.

But, given the introduction of Mike Yurcich as his offensive coordinator this offseason, the fourth in his five-year Penn State career, Clifford is now similarly extolling the benefits of his new OC’s influence.

“I definitely feel like I'm playing a pretty high level, and he's brought a lot of good out of me, things that I've never thought I could do,” Clifford said. “He's given me a lot of chances to prove to him that he can trust me, changing plays and making protection calls and putting us in the right play, whatever it is, and I feel like I've done that so far and he's been happy with how I've been progressing.”

As Clifford would go on to explain, though, there is a real distinction between feeling good about development and personal progress against feeling as though the mountaintop has been reached.

Taking Yurcich’s message to heart, that “you can’t be OK with where you’re at,” Clifford has seemingly found a comfortable wavelength from which to operate and find the value in daily improvement.

“I'll never be satisfied with where I'm at. We're only five days in the fall camp, so this is just the beginning,” Clifford said. “I’m trying to break my ceiling and go even higher each and every day, and bring the unit along as well. I think that we're doing really good things right now, but it's only day five of camp, so we are not even close to where we need to be. But we'll get where we need to be, I'm confident in that.”

2) Moving through Penn State’s offense ahead of the 2021 season, head coach James Franklin provided some clarity of the program’s plans at the running back position.

He just didn’t go so far as to specify who’d be included in those plans.

Indicating that he’s been pleased with the competition that has so far involved Noah Cain, Keyvone Lee, Caziah Holmes, Devyn Ford, and John Lovett, Franklin added that the combination of the room’s strength, Ja’Juan Seider’s coaching, and the mix of personalities have all been beneficial.

And, ultimately, Franklin said he’d like to use three backs, with a fourth ready to play in case of injury.

“We’re big believers that we're gonna play three backs. The days of feature backs in college football, I think are gone. We want to play three backs,” Franklin said. “I think it's hard to play four. But you better have a fourth ready because one of those three will get dinged up and then it will just go to a three-man rotation with that new guy in there. I do think we have four backs that we could play with. We're trying to figure out who the top three will be.”

That process of culling the options will be aided by scrimmages in the coming weeks, a data point on which Franklin will put an emphasis.

3) Speaking of options, Franklin was asked to talk about how the battle opposite Jaquan Brisker is shaping up at free safety.

And, it’s a little bit of a familiar question for Penn State and defensive coordinator Brent Pry to navigate as the 2021 season gets closer.

Brisker has established himself as having to be on the field. But how does Penn State’s approach change, if at all, if the next-best safety has the same strengths as Brisker playing in the box?

Calling the competition “pretty impressive,” Franklin listed four other safeties who have been competing this preseason with a serious opportunity to make an impact this year.

“(Keaton) Ellis is there now. Tig (Brown), (Johnathan) Sutherland, and Tyler (Rudolph) Those guys are battling, whether it's to back up Brisker or whether it's to compete for that other starting job,” Franklin said. “And then there's obviously some other packages, whether it's dollar or nickel or star that will factor in there too.

“Brisker has put himself in a position that he's obviously a guy that we think is going to have a significant opportunity to make huge plays for us at the starting safety position. So it's really figuring out who's that other guy. And right now at this stage, you could make arguments for a number of them.”

Highlighting the “light coming on” for Rudolph, Sutherland’s veteran status, and the overall “legitimate competition” at the position group, Franklin said he was confident that they would have “four safeties that we’ll feel good about playing.”

4) In the wake of last week’s release of updated NCAA guidance ahead of the start of preseason practices for COVID-19 and its protocols, Franklin was again asked Wednesday evening about vaccination rates within the program.

Declining to provide a specific percentage as some other head coaches have done across the country, with some programs now claiming 100 percent vaccination rates, Franklin made two clear points.

The first is that he remains a wholehearted advocate of every player in his program being vaccinated. “I’m not going to be happy until we're 100 percent,” he said. “I'm not going to get into the exact percentages but we're pretty high.”

The second is that he also remains committed to the notion that it’s a personal choice that he cannot and won’t mandate, saying that he’s hopeful among the handful who remain unvaccinated, a few are close to having it done, while a few others are unlikely to ever get the jab.

Stressing daily the consequences to the program of potential positives to his players, Franklin elaborated on the challenges that remain in getting to the finish line for a full program vaccination.

“I won't be happy until we're 100 percent. I don't know if we'll get there because there's just a couple of guys that for a variety of reasons, they may not be comfortable or their families may not be comfortable. So we're talking about it all the time,” Franklin said. “I’ve been pleased overall. We showed that we were able to kind of handle this. We learned from it, a lot. I think we did a really good job with COVID last year. Now we got to be able to handle COVID and play football the way I know we're capable of playing.”

5) One small note from Franklin’s waxing poetic about his days playing college football and how preseason camp has changed since that time.

Though maybe a small detail, operationally, Franklin said that they’ve been running concurrent, dual walk-throughs in preseason camp in installation periods. The result is two defensive groups and two offensive groups taking in the installation, alleviating the problem of zone-out for players lower on the depth chart who aren’t actively involved in the walk-through.

“I'm a big believer in reps,” Franklin said. “As much as you tell these guys to take mental reps when they're standing in the back, the best way to get guys confidence and understanding what we're trying to do is by doing it. So we're doubling our reps through first team, second team, third team, and even fourth team. So that's been helpful.”

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