And so begins The Home Stretch for the Nittany Lions.
But home has nothing to do with it, as Penn State begins the final – and most challenging — third of its season on the road in Minneapolis on Saturday.
When the team plane takes off at University Park Airport this afternoon, Penn State begins its most intensive three weeks of the entire calendar year.
And all of Penn State football will be stretched: head coach Bill O’Brien, his assistants, support personnel, staff and — most significantly — the players.
Summer practice started on Aug. 5. And over the next 106 days through today, the Nittany Lions played eight games. To start, there were four games. Then a break. Two games. Then another break.
And now, after two difficult games that were low on style points from not only the Russian judge but from almost everyone else as well, the Nittany Lions are hitting their toughest string of games of 2013.
Counting tomorrow’s road opponent, surprising Minnesota (7-2), three of Penn State’s four remaining games are against teams in the Big Ten’s upper echelon this season. The Gophers are riding a three-game winning streak, as is Wisconsin (6-2), another tough road test and the Nov. 30 season-ender for Penn State. Nebraska (6-2), who Penn State faces Nov. 23 in Beaver Stadium, has won four of its last five games – losing only to Minnesota. All told, those three teams are 20-6, with wins in 10 of their last 11 games. Hot streaks in cold weather.
Only 1-7 Purdue, the Lions’ opponent Nov. 16 at home, is anything close to a sure thing. However, PSU’s games against the Hoosiers and Illini certainly should give O’Brien fodder to disavow that notion to his players.
REVAMPING RECRUITING
With a 5-3 record, the Nittany Lions’ finish is not only significant on the field. Off the field, their 22-day journey will have lasting effects for the next 2,200 days or so – that’s roughly how long it would be until a current high school junior graduates from Penn State if he takes a redshirt and finishes his Nittany Lion career with the 2019 season.
Christian Hackenberg could very well be all-pro with a wife and a kid by then. And maybe O’Brien would be his head coach there, too. Recruiting-wise, Penn State really needs a 2-2 finish, or better.
“Most of their top recruits were either at the Ohio State game or saw it. And Indiana didn’t help a lot,” said Ryan Snyder, recruiting analyst for both Blue White Illustrated and its national partner, Rivals.com. “If they lose to Minnesota and/or Purdue, some of the top 2015 kids may check Penn State off their list.”
This is not where O’Brien and his recruiting czar, the savant Bill Kavanaugh, expected to be right now. It’s decidedly better, but different. The paradigm has shifted and the recruiting workload across the board has greatly increased, all the while coaching four games in – did I already mention this? – 22 days.
Whereas O’Brien anticipated having two new players enroll in January, there will likely be three. And before the NCAA sanctions were eased six weeks ago, he counted on 15-17 players in the Class of 2014. Now there may be as many as 18-21. And, oh yeah, there’s kind of a mid-December industry deadline to get verbals. New NCAA rules passed last Wednesday established Dec. 16 through Jan. 15 as a dead period, where coaches can’t initiate contact (although recruits may and are encouraged to do so).
“The entire game plan changed,” Snyder said. “They were in great shape with the 2014 class and looking to get five or six more. They were all about 2015. But now they have to scramble to get more 2014 kids, all the while maintaining good relationships with the 2015 recruits. Penn State was off to a hellish start with them. Other schools will soon wrap up 2014 and focus on 2015, while Penn State – because of the extra scholarships from the NCAA – is going back to 2014.
“It’s the craziest three months I’ve seen since I’ve been doing this,” added Snyder, who is also Rivals.com’s in-house recruiting expert on the University of Maryland. “No coaching staff has had to completely change its recruiting plan – for Penn State, that’s a good thing. But it’s not comparable to when a head coach is fired. That happens at the end of a season and most places are just trying to hold onto what they got.”
AGE-OLD QUESTION FOR ASSISTANTS
So, the best thing the Nittany Lions can do for recruiting is win.
Not that they need it, but that’s added incentive for O’Brien and his assistants to stock up on DD coffee and run the Keurig in Lasch non-stop. They must game plan, teach in the meeting rooms, coach on the practice field, attend high school games on Friday night and redouble their efforts on the Class of 2014.
Much of the Nittany Lion assistant coaching staff may be new to Penn State, but they are – as advertised – experienced. And that means older as well. Six of the nine assistants are between 55 and 62. No way a November, full of recruiting demands heretofore unseen, a slate of tough games in colder weather and practices in the dark, is easy for them. Or anybody.
The two bye-weeks ameliorated some of their earlier game-planning stress. O’Brien and Co. formulated game plans in the offseason for the first three opponents – Syracuse, Eastern Michigan and Central Florida – without a lot of changes. Kent State was really an autopilot job.
Penn State had two weeks to get ready for Indiana (it didn’t look that way) and Michigan (it looked that way), then two weeks to get ready for Ohio State and Illinois (insert your own analysis here: _________). Any extra time is now over. The cycle of playing, watching videos of an opponent, prepping, teaching, coaching and traveling (to Minnesota and Wisconsin) is ramped up and amped up.
And, all the while, so is the recruiting.
At the same time, let’s not forget the support groups. The games are coming fast and furious, so there’s more work in less time for the medical and equipment staffs, to say nothing of the video team, the recruiting group and the PR folks.
THEY’RE COLLEGE KIDS, AFTER ALL
The stretch run may be more of a slow walk for some players. Nagging injuries that never healed, despite two off-weeks, now have even less time to get better. Linebacker Ben Kline, for instance, needs shoulder surgery – but is delaying it until the fast-approaching offseason. Harsher injuries, like Akeel Lynch’s strained MCL and Zach Zwinak’s fumbilitis, don’t have the luxury of time to get better.
And let’s not forget the players are college kids. Classes are tighter now than in September, with increased workloads, the piling-on of projects and another slate of exams for most majors coming between now and Thanksgiving break, which begins Nov. 23. More study time equals less sleep, poorer eating habits and residual fatigue that can carry over to the practice field.
The players could be testier, as things tighten up in all aspects of their cocooned existence (also true of their non-football playing classmates). Seniors realize this is it for their college careers, a heightened feeling that occurs sooner without a bowl game. Two emotional OTs, both victories, add confidence but were obviously draining, too.
Tempers can flare, even among the most veteran players. Take earlier this week. Two of the team’s biggest leaders, one on offense and one on defense, squared off in a wrestling match of sorts that was not of the good-natured variety. (Of course, that offense-defense thing happens in summer, too, including this past August when a separate pair of stars were in the ring.)
Plus, freshmen are not accustomed to seasons — as well as offseasons and preseasons — that are much longer than what they had in high school. The rigors of tougher practices against daily quality competition coupled with time and academic demands can add to the challenges of playing college ball for the first time. Eleven Nittany Lions have earned their first start already this season, so they too must adjust to the newer, increasing demands – in games and in practices – that come with the new responsibility.
And all of this, it goes without saying (although I am about to) comes with a reduced roster and a much smaller rotation of fresh players. That’s been the case all season. You don’t have to be a Brown graduate to know there’s some sort of cumulative effect over the final three weeks.
That’s wearing and no doubt a challenge for O’Brien as well. He’s “just” a second-year head coach and a good bit of this stuff (the bad bits, too) OB can only get OTJ.
THE ARMS RACE
The most prominent freshman is Hackenberg, who has been faced with the biggest challenge and most stress of anyone connected with Penn State football (O’Brien included) in the past 106 days – the six weeks before that. He’s responded admirably, but his first college season will extend two weeks longer (Nov. 30 against Wisconsin, with an average temperature of 30 degrees) than his last high school season — which ended Nov. 16, 2012, with a 30-14 loss in 54-degree weather.
Hackenberg’s arm has had quite a workout. No one on the outside knows his pitch count in practice. But he’s already thrown 281 passes in eight games, 11th on PSU’s single-season record list. At this rate, he’ll pass the ball 140 more times for a season total of 421, No. 2 all-time and just 25 behind the 446 of fifth-year senior Matt McGloin in 2012. In three years at Fork Union, Hackenberg averaged 267 passes a season, including 291 last year.
This will soon be virgin territory for the quarterback (already a veteran in many regards) and comes on the heels of a high volume of passes since he arrived on campus and began working, especially, with Allen Robinson – over five months ago. And, as O’Brien has pointed out on occasion, Hackenberg is going mostly on genes – he’s yet to have the benefit of Penn State’s offseason weight and conditioning program.
In Penn State’s favor going into its final game, the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Madison, is that there are no classes the entire week after the Nebraska game. That may be tempered a bit, though, given that Wisconsin is the toughest draw of Penn State’s final flourish.
But that’s 21 days away.
By then, from recruiting soup to Big Ten nuts, O’Brien and the Nittany Lions will have tasted a frenzy few have ever experienced in college football. As usual.
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