With Only #107 Days ’til Temple Opener, Penn State’s Players Are Also Coaches

James Franklin likes to say that over the summer, the Penn State football program is in the hands of the players.

He told them as much on Sunday.

That’s when he met with the 2015 squad in the team auditorium in Lasch Building on the eve of the start of the first of Penn State’s two six-week summer academic sessions.

“I think everybody’s really excited about the direction and where we’re going,” Franklin said while on the Coaches Caravan this week in Philadelphia.

“One of the things I talked to them briefly about was that in the summertime the players need to truly take ownership of the team and run with it.”

Of course, Franklin said pretty much the same thing last May, too, when he and his staff were just four months into their new jobs at Penn State.

But for many of the Nittany Lions, it was their third head coach in four Mays and there still may have been still too much flotsam and jetsam for the message to stick.

So this year, Franklin means it.

“We talked about that same thing last year, but…,” Franklin said, then paused. “It was really challenging and difficult for them to do that last year when they didn’t understand the expectations and the schemes and things like that.”

For the first time in four and even five years, veteran players like Hull, Dieffenbach, Smith, James and Amos were not in that meeting room on Sunday. Six of the seven 2014 team captains have departed – leaving only junior quarterback Christian Hackenberg. All of that will hurt. But Hack is joined by 14 other starters, as the core group of players who’ve been to sanction hell and back. By their own choice, better and more committed than ever – despite, or maybe because of, a 7-6 season that ended with an overtime victory in the Pinstripe Bowl.

“We’re a very close knit team,” said redshirt sophomore Garrett Sickels after the Blue-White Game. “Especially my grade (Class of 2013), because we stayed committed through the scandal, and the guys after us, who came even after everything happened. Those two classes together, we’re all tight. We all trust each other. You can talk about trust, but we lived it and did it. How close we are is going to carry over to the team. They have to depend on each other and we do.”

TO BE FRANK WITH YOU

The paradigm has shifted, says Franklin.

“Now, after having some real time invested in it,” he said, “the guys can really take control and get a lot of work done on their own. I’m excited by that.”

By “it,” the second-year head coach means The Franklin Way. Tuesday marks Day No. 500 of Franklin’s Penn State tenure. And Tuesday will offer a glimpse into what Sickels, slated to start at defensive end this fall, and Franklin are talking about. Penn State’s players don’t have any official workouts or lifts scheduled for Tuesdays – they go Monday-Wednesday-Friday – so the veteran players will be the ones who must make sure the work still gets done.

This is what Sickels believes:

“We’re the only ones here in the first summer session. We’ll make sure it gets done. You just text people: ‘Let’s go to field at this time.’ We’ll do one-on-ones, foot drills, whatever we need to do to get ourselves ready. I’m really close with (offensive tackle) Andrew Nelson. I’ll get with Nelson and we’ll do one-on-ones, and so will the other guys. If we wait until August to start that, it’s too late. You have to be doing consistently throughout the summer.”

This is what senior cornerback Trevor Williams believes:

“The younger guys respect the older guys on the team. Our chemistry is very strong. It’s not going to be a problem. It’s not going to be a problem with (safety) Jordan Lucas or myself around, or Hackenberg or (wide receiver) Geno Lewis. We’ll text our position groups and tell them, ‘Look, we’re doing extra after the workout,’ or ‘We’re coming in to watch extra film.’ I think we’ll do fine.”

This what junior linebacker Brandon Bell believes:

“We’ll make sure everyone is motivated. I can talk, I can be real vocal. But it won’t just be me. It’ll be all the older guys on the team, collectively gathering the younger guys and making sure everyone does well. Jordan Lucas is a very vocal guy; he’ll make sure everyone is energized. Nyeem (Wartman) too, plus some of the big name guys who you think would be doing it.”

And believe this, too: For the players – who are college students in the middle of summer break, after all — having no coaches around other than conditioning guru Dwight Galt and his staff is a welcome break.

“As players, we’re happy the coaches are gone,” Williams said after the spring game, not really kidding.

TO BE SHOOP WITH YOU

Defensive coordinator Bob Shoop gets it, really understanding.

“Our season went all the way until Dec 27. It was a grind. We came back and jumped right back into winter program. We pushed them hard this spring,” Shoop said after the spring game. “They have to finish up well academically. They need to be an 18- to 22-year-old kid for a little while. And when they come back in June, they’ll be ready to rock and roll. Coach Galt and his staff will have them going bigger, stronger, faster. Conditioning is of premium value.”

NCAA regulations have loosened the past years, allowing football players to have eight hours a week of mandatory workouts and meetings. That gives coaches like Shoop a couple hours a week during the summer to meet with small groups of players.

“With those eight hours we get two hours of film study with them in the summertime,” Shoop said. “So we take advantage of that within the framework of the rules. … For us, when we get our two hours of film, we’ll continue to impact them. We’ll watch cut-ups from the spring, we’ll watch our installation tapes with them again, we’ll reinforce those things. Then those guys have to have the player-coach practices, when they can do some things individually and they can also do group work.”

Players as coaches — the players’ motivation to hashtag it out together a la their head coach couldn’t be clearer:

As of Thursday, there are only #107days until the season-opener on Sept. 5 against Temple.