My defining memory of Bill O’Brien and Christian Hackenberg together is this:
Penn State’s football practice was open for a few minutes one weeknight midway through the 2013 football season.
It was O’Brien’s second season as the Nittany Lions’ head coach and Hackenberg’s first as their quarterback.
And O’Brien, the head coach and the offensive coordinator as well as the quarterback coach in all but the name, was on one knee. He was positioned behind Hackenberg, in the midst of a passing drill that was to feature a quick drop by the freshman quarterback.
O’Brien grabbed Hackenberg’s right ankle with one hand and his left with the other. Then the coach literally walked the QB through the first two steps of his drop. It was the kind of literal hands-on coaching that O’Brien loved and under which Hackenberg thrived. O’Brien saw himself as a teacher and Hackenberg was the gold star student.
It was like that way off the field as well. Throughout the season, the two met together every Thursday, one-on-one, to review the game plan, watch video and follow-up the field work they accomplished together.
• • •
Talk of Hackenberg and O’Brien hit fever pitch Thursday at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, when one spoke right after the other in the same room.
Their union at Penn State was short, but sweet. Hackenberg was the first player in the Class of 2013 to commit to O’Brien, on Feb. 28, 2012. He recommitted in an emotional recruits-and-parents meeting with O’Brien in Lasch Building on the Sunday afternoon of July 29, 2012, the week the NCAA sanctions rocked Penn State. (Six months later, O’Brien said: “That was an important day for us at Penn State and the football program because it was an honest, somewhat emotional, tough, but very productive meeting.”)
On Feb. 6, 2013, Hackenberg officially committed to Penn State on National Letter of Intent Signing Day. Then, although he was free to transfer elsewhere without penalty, Hackenberg committed again on June 28, 2013, when showed up on campus to start classes as a Penn State freshman.
All told, from June 28 to Dec. 31, 2013 – when O’Brien resigned from Penn State to become head coach of the NFL’s Houston Texans – player and coach were together on campus for only 187 days. Hackenberg and O’Brien’s successor, James Franklin, were together for almost four times that – for 722 days, from Jan. 11, 2014 to Jan. 2, 2016.
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About 30 members of the media and O’Brien were squeezed inside a tiny and nearly-bare hospitality suite of the Holiday Inn in Urbana, Ill.
It was Sept. 28, 2012, the eve of Penn State’s game against the University of Illinois. The next day O’Brien, Michael Mauti and the Nittany Lions would extract 35-7 payback against Illinois head coach Tim Beckman, who two months hence had come to State College to poach – unsuccessfully — some Penn State players for the Illini. All they got was Ryan Nowicki.
But that Friday night in the Holiday Inn O’Brien was seated uncomfortably in a chair, his back literally against the wall and looking at a roomful of Penn State beat reporters looking at him. He was like he was on stage. The subject was Hackenberg, far and away the signature recruit of Penn State’s next class. Keeping Hackenberg engaged and committed, O’Brien candidly admitted, was his top daily task for each day of the previous seven months. Penn State’s football future depended on it.
“He’s my recruit. He’s my guy,” O’Brien said (and I double-checked my memory this week with that of someone else who was also there that night). “I talk with him all the time. We talk about everything. I can’t wait until we sign him and I can tell him to stop calling me ‘dude.’ ”
• • •
It was National Letter of Intent Signing Day on Feb. 6, 2013, and O’Brien was talking about Hackenberg. He was talking about whether Hackenberg was ready for the next level, a phrase O’Brien liked so much he used it as a team slogan in spring 2013.
“No. 1 is, he’s a really good person. We feel really good about our quarterback room right now. It’s young; it’s a young quarterback room. Whoever plays quarterback for us next year, whoever takes the field in the (season-opening) Syracuse game will basically be playing college football for the first time. Steven (Bench) got a few snaps this year against Virginia, but for all intents and purposes, the quarterback that plays for us next year will be somewhat of a rookie quarterback. When you look at our room right now, we feel like we have competitive guys, smart guys, guys that come from good families, guys that are going to work hard in the classroom, and Christian fits right in there. He’s a tall guy, accurate arm, strong arm, he’s smart, and we feel good.
“Again, the jump from high school to college to the pros — those are big jumps. He’s making the jump from high school to college; that’s a big jump. The system that we run here at Penn State is not the simplest system in the world to learn for a quarterback. He’s going to have to really begin to study and understand what it takes to play quarterback at this level, which we’ve talked about a lot in the recruiting process. The same can be said of Tyler (Ferguson) and Steven.
“When you play quarterback at Penn State, that’s very, very different than any other position on the team. When you play quarterback at Penn State, you have to really learn how to balance the classroom with being the best-prepared quarterback you can be, working in the weight room, studying the playbook, studying the game plan, your opponent, then obviously going to class — which is No. 1, and will always be No. 1 at Penn State.
O’Brien continued: “We think Christian is a guy that’s going to come in here and do all those things and we feel really good about our room at that position.
“…If we believe that any of these guys are ready to play as true freshmen, we have to get them prepared to play and we have to play them. We have to live with rookie mistakes and we also have to do a great job of guiding them and teaching them and staying with them. That’s how it goes.”
• • •
As a freshman at Penn State, Hackenberg set 13 passing records, including the one for most passes in a game (55 vs. Indiana). He completed 231 of 392 passes for 2,955 yards, for a completion percentage of 58.9%, with 20 touchdown passes and 10 interceptions, and 21 sacks. He was the second true freshman Penn State quarterback to start the season opener, started all 12 games and was named the Big Ten’s Freshman of the Year.
Hackenberg’s next two seasons, although he was twice elected team captains, didn’t go as well. In 2014, he was 270 of 484 (55.8%) for 2,977 yards, with 12 TDs, 15 interceptions and 44 sacks. In 2015, he was 192 of 359 (53.5%) for 2,525 yards, with 16 TD passes, six picks and 38 sacks.
He left the TaxSlayer Bowl game early with an injury and left Penn State with a season of eligibility remaining.
• • •
Midway through the Nittany Lions’ 2013 season, O’Brien was asked what it was like coaching the 18-year-old Hackenberg after several seasons of working with Super Bowl champion and NFL MVP quarterback Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. It was Brady, if you recall, who O’Brien got into it with on the sidelines of a Patriots game in December 2011 – just weeks before he was hired as Penn State’s head coach. (Watch it here.)
“It’s a difficult situation Christian’s in, being a freshman and playing college football for the first time,” O’Brien said. “In the beginning of year, I had to be more patient with him. And think I improved on that with him. I get him over on the bench and talk about the previous series, and I think that’s helped.
“When he makes a mistake I know he knows what to do. If he makes the same one twice, that’s when I lose my patience with him a little bit. And he gets that.”
• • •
These days, the question is: Will Hackenberg get it again, this time in Houston?
