With only minutes remaining in Penn State’s loss to Northwestern two weeks ago an entire team stood on the sideline watching as meaningless minutes ticked away.
All except the offensive line, and coach Herb Hand.
Hand knelt down in front of his unit, waving his arms pointing out schemes on a whiteboard. The game was over in all but the official sense, yet Hand appeared to be coaching like the drive of the season was about to happen.
But that kind of effort is what it takes to get Penn State’s offensive line from where it is today to where it needs to be. If there is time to coach it’s when the game is happening.
This bye week provided Hand with a chance to reflect in the film room and look back at how far his unit has come. And how far it still has to go.
“When you watch guys on a daily basis, sometimes it is good to go back and turn on the film from the first day of practice and see the progress the guys have made, not only individually, but collectively,” Hand said on Thursday. “Even going back to the beginning of the season. What we were able to do during the bye week as coaches was a lot of self-scout. We took time to get into what we were able to accomplish during the first five games. And then look at what we needed to get better at.
“We were able to do that during the bye week. And then go back in from a practice standpoint and really home in on, again, those fundamentals and techniques that each guy has to execute for us to be successful collectively as a unit, which is obviously going to help us an offense and help us be the best team we can. During that open, those opportunities for self scout were very valuable for us.”
It doesn’t take a decade of football experience to know that Penn State’s offensive line has struggled. The running game is shaping up to be one of the worst in school history from a statistical perspective.
For Hand, lamenting about “what is” doesn’t improve the situation. But working, coaching and teaching can — especially for the youngest of offensive linemen.
“We have several freshmen who are in our two deep and travel squad. James (Franklin) has kind of talked to you guys about green lighting, yellow lighting and red lighting younger guys. We have a few freshmen who are yellow lighted guys right now that are taking reps in practice and developing. They are getting closer to being guys that we could use if we needed to. We don’t necessarily want to use those guys unless we have to.”
“The other guys, we basically have about eight guys who have taken the majority of the reps for us. Wendy Laurent, Derek Dowrey and Albert Hall are kind of our three main backup players. They have to be able to play multiple positions, which they do. Dowrey has repped at both guard positions. Wendy has repped at all three inside positions. Albret has repped at basically every position but center. When you are preparing for a game, you are getting eight guys ready. Those guys have to be multiple. And those guys are developing nicely. We’ll see how that works out for us this weekend if we need to work some of those guys in. They are certainly ready, repping and preparing like the starters.”
That’s good news for Penn State fans who might just have to wait for the offensive line to find itself. That self-discovery may not even happen this season, but every rep is a chance to get better and that’s all the Nittany Lions can control right now.
“We’re not there yet, obviously. We’ve gotten a lot better. Sometimes it’s hard to see, but we have gotten better,” Hand said.
“We don’t temper our expectations and our standards. We have a standard that we want to play at as a unit because we know the standards that are here at Penn State. We are working hard to achieve those.”
