James Franklin hit the airwaves once again for his weekly radio show. Here are a few things of note he said Thursday night. Penn State opens the season this Saturday against Temple in Philadelphia. Kick is set for 3:30.
Difference between playing a college game in a pro stadium?
A big part of the college game is boundary and field. You have hash marks in a college game that are much wider — 13 yards apart. In NFL games, the hash marks are only six yards apart. There’s almost never a boundary. You’re going to look at the field and see pro hash marks and college hash marks. It’s gonna look confusing. A lot of our splits with wide receivers and even the defense is based on numbers and hash. And you’re not going to have college numbers on the field. You’ll see tic marks where numbers should be.
Do you think we’ll see Breneman on the field at some point?
I love Adam. He’s as much of a class act as you’ll see. Doing it in school, in the community, always got a smile on his face. I can’t speak on that. I’m not sure. Adam had problems in high school, he’s had problems in college. I’d love to see him on the field. He’s on the roster, just not on the depth chart right now. More than anything though I know he’s going to get an unbelievable degree from Penn State and will be highly successful.
How deep is the offensive line?
Our depth is a lot better. We’re still at a situation where we’re relying on a lot of young players. I think we’re a lot better. We do have a two deep of scholarship players, but the backup is a redshirt freshman. You’d love to have a senior starter with a backup sophomore and a freshman behind him. The question is is the redshirt freshman ready to go in the game as a backup or are we better moving parts around? I think depending on who it is, that could happen. They’re playing better together. Palmer still looks like he should be playing for Pat Chambers. He looks like he’s 245. But that’s exciting. I’m hoping by the end of the season he’s maybe 305 or 310. I think next year he could be 325 or 330 and still look skinny.
What went into moving Farmer to safety?
Koa’s basically a 6-foot-1, 220 pound kid who is the second or third fastest on the team. We recruited him as an athlete and hopefully to be a safety for us. We had an issue at the field linebacker position last year, so we said let’s give him a chance. He couldn’t do it as a true freshman. Right now we’re trying to get him on the field and find the best place for him. We also didn’t want to burn Ayron Monroe’s redshirt, so Shoop said, ‘Why not move Koa back there?’ He’s done really well. It’s probably where he would have been the whole time if we hadn’t had such a need at linebacker.
On what McSorley has done.
I think Trace is in an ideal situation. You’d love to have a situation where you have Aaron Rodgers drafted and be able to sit behind Favre for a year or two. I think that’s a similar situation with Trace. He’s a smart guy, he’s athletic, he’s a winner. Won three state championships in Virginia. Is doing great in the classroom, got a really good feel for our offense right now. We’re in a situation where we not only have a great starting quarterback but where we’re gonna be able to get him some reps. In practice, he’s been lights-out. Last year he gave our starting defense fits in two minute with his decision making and ability to make plays with his feet. We’re excited about his future.
What kind of competition did you see in practice that you didn’t see last year?
Last year, the way practice was played out. Our defense having a scholarship of two deep linemen, our defense beat the heck out of our offense every single day in practice. What did that do to our defense? Their confidence was sky high. Our offense wasn’t able to build that confidence. Now our practices are much more competitive.
There’s days when our offense gets after our defense. I think that’s going to be better for both. I see competition now with our WR unit and our DB unit going after each other. It’s not just across the ball, it’s our offensive tackle knowing that if he doesn’t come to work every day, there’s another tackle coming to take his job. I showed the team a video of the original dream team. The greatest game ever played was a practice game between 11 first-ballot Hall of Famers. Jordan and Magic were talking about the greatest game they’ve ever played in. That’s what I want our practices to be, harder than any game we play in.
