James Franklin recaps open practice & overall development this spring
The novelty of playing football in front of more than a few dozen onlookers still hadn’t quite worn off when James Franklin addressed reporters following Penn State’s semi-open practice on Saturday afternoon at Beaver Stadium.
“We announced that it was 7,500 fans or somewhere in that ballpark,” Franklin said. “After last season, it felt like 75,000.”
It was Penn State’s 12th practice of the spring, and it was indeed open, albeit only to current Penn State freshmen and parents of players and staff. The Nittany Lions will be opening up their April 23 practice to the senior class, but unless they plan on staging special practices for sophomores, juniors, postgraduates or doctoral candidates, that will be the last time members of the public will be seeing them for a few months.
As one would expect given the turnover in personnel and the arrival of a new offensive coordinator, the Nittany Lions gave the impression during their brief public appearance of being very much a work in progress. “Obviously, there are a lot of things we’ve got to get cleaned up,” Franklin said, “but being back in the stadium was a real positive for us.”
One of the advantages of playing in front of a crowd, Franklin said, was that it allowed the staff to get a better feel for how its quarterbacks are coming along in the new offense being installed by Mike Yurcich, particularly backups Ta’Quan Roberson and Christian Veilleux, who between them have attempted just one pass at the collegiate level.
“I think it’s hard to say that [you’re comfortable with the QB depth] when you have guys who haven’t played significant game reps,” Franklin said. “It’s hard to say that you feel that way because you never know until guys get in there. That’s why I think being in Beaver Stadium today was important for us. Because it’s different. It’s different than being on the practice fields at Lasch. We’ll try to do this again next Friday night, and that will be important for us as well.
“Both Ta’Quan and Christian show some really good flashes of understanding what we’re trying to do, how to operate the offense the way Mike wants it run, and then also the ability to make some plays and have the vision to read a defense and deliver a throw. Ta’Quan this spring has probably had as many of those ‘wow’ throws as anybody. Sean has had a bunch of them, Ta’Quan has had a bunch of them and Christian as well. But until you get that experience, it’s hard to say that you feel great. … So we’ve got some work to do there. But we feel really good about our guys, and we feel really good about the guy coaching them.”
As for returning starter Sean Clifford, Franklin said he’s “done some really good things” throughout spring drills.
“I think Mike has really been impressed from what I’ve seen in terms of Sean’s approach,” Franklin said. “It’s really important to Sean. He works really hard at it and prepares like you’re supposed to prepare.”
Both Roberson and Clifford were intercepted by the afternoon’s breakout star, Kalen King. A four-star cornerback from Detroit and a January enrollee at Penn State, King had been generating plenty of buzz before Saturday’s scrimmage, and it only intensified with his outstanding public debut.
“He is physically ready,” Franklin said. “He’s a guy who came in and was already physically developed from a weight standpoint and a strength standpoint. He’s also very mature, him and his twin brother [Kobe]. They’re both very mature. They know how to prepare, they know how to compete, they know how to work. They went to one of the most successful high school programs in the United States, Cass Tech, that got them prepared with the level of competition they played in a really good league in Detroit.
“And on top of that, he’s got ball skills. You want to recruit guys who can play both sides of the ball. He’s got tremendous confidence in his talents, and he’s got ball skills. I know this sounds strange, I know this sounds funny; he’s made some great plays on the ball, but some guys, the ball just likes them. … They get a number of turnovers by making great plays, and they get a number where the ball just tips up and lands in their hands or it was thrown to him off a misread. He’s one of those guys. Part of it is that he’s always around the ball and he’s got a pretty good idea what we’re asking him to do from a scheme perspective. What you guys saw today is not new. We’ve seen it all spring.”
Penn State can definitely make good use of that particular talent. The Nittany Lions came up with only 10 takeaways last season, ranking 12th in the Big Ten and 83rd in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
Penn State will be hoping that King and another new cornerback, South Carolina transfer Johnny Dixon, can help the team evoke memories of its great defensive performances of the past. The Lions added those players to a secondary that was already deep in talent, with cornerback Tariq Castro-Fields and safety Jaquan Brisker opting to return for their final seasons. During Penn State’s radio call of the scrimmage, analyst Jack Ham said that this year’s group “has a chance to be one of the best secondaries Penn State has ever had.”
The Lions are also looking to evoke memories of a packed, raucous Beaver Stadium. Saturday’s crowd, encouraging though it was, only hinted at what Franklin and Penn State’s administration are hoping will be possible in the fall.
“Being in that stadium felt great,” Franklin said. “I can’t image what it will be like to get back to what we were averaging the two years before the pandemic. I think we averaged 106,000 fans for those two years.”
Penn State, he said, is eager to do “whatever we have to do to get that stadium back full – that’s for our community, that’s for the state of Pennsylvania, that’s for our university, that’s for our athletic department and obviously that’s for our football program. So anybody who is comfortable getting a vaccine, let’s get the vaccine so we can get as many people in the stadium as we possibly can and try to get back to normal.”
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