Penn State Football: O’Brien Enters Evaluation Period Following Spring Practice

Any coach will tell you that their job never really ends. For Penn State coach Bill O’Brien that’s particularly true as he looks to navigate the program through the second year of NCAA sanctions. O’Brien has stressed the importance of getting the most out of the roster while the program works with scholarship restrictions. The coming weeks will be a important time for the program even while players enjoy the time off prior to training camp.

While fans and beat writers alike can make judgement on a player’s ability to help the team based on a single scrimmage, for O’Brien the Blue White game is only one of 15 practices he has to consider.

“Basically over the next 7-10 days, I will meet with every player on this football team and talk about where they’re at academically, obviously where they are at football-wise, and anything they want to talk about,” O’Brien said. “I think that that is something that I will always do here at Penn State.”

“Then we will meet as a staff. Head coaches are not allowed to recruit in May, but the staff is, so the staff will organize their recruiting trips and where they are going to head to go visit high schools and things like that in the month of May. We will meet on football in the morning and recruiting in the afternoon and that is basically the schedule for the next two weeks.”

Even with 14 other practices to consider, the Blue White game still provides coaches and players a chance to operate under game-like conditions. Scrimmages are one thing, being able to execute in front of thousands of fans can be telling.

“We take the Blue White game very seriously. We will go in there and we will watch the film as a staff,” O’Brien said. “We will watch the film and use it as another evaluation tool. The one thing about the [Blue White game] from a scheme stand point was that it was very simple, so if there was a bunch of mental errors with an individual player, that is probably not really good.”

“We, Johnny Butler and myself, called simple schemes so hopefully the guys lined up and do what they were doing. It should have been a scrimmage with not a lot of mental errors. We will see how they play. It is certainly an important evaluation. It is a piece of the puzzle.”

In the end O’Brien -like any coach- is focused on getting the most out of his team. While the battle at quarterback often receives the most press, positions like linebacker, offensive line, and special teams, are all areas that could benefit from depth and proper utilization of players on the roster.

With all the time spent in film study in the coming weeks and time spent on the practice field this spring, O’Brien will no doubt have the best grasp on his roster come this August that he has had in his tenure at Penn State.