Sitting at 5-0, Penn State football once again finds itself facing a daunting middle portion of its schedule with meetings against Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio State all on the horizon in a three-game stretch that will define the season.
With the bye week now officially underway following a 17-7 win against Northwestern on Saturday, how to use that time is a question that could help define the outcome of that three-game stretch. While one week of practice won’t change a season, a wasted week certainly could.
Penn State has had a mixed bag under James Franklin coming out of the bye week but a laundry list of daunting foes might have to do more with the record than how the Nittany Lions spend their time in the 13 days between games. Nevertheless Franklin and company are set to make at least one noteworthy change – an additional practice – that marks one wrinkle compared to bye weeks of season’s past.
“We’re gonna have an extra day of practice,” Franklin said earlier this week. “We have typically on the Thursday [of the bye week] a non travel squad practice [but now] we’re gonna have a full practice, not anything heavy, more of a jog through type practice more of a mental type practice. And we’re going to get a head start on our opponent as well.”
There is an overarching question here regarding how much a team can really improve over the span of a few practices. Traditionally, Penn State does a day of corrections on any given week. Sundays have long been designated for that before getting Mondays off. And then the program advances on to the next opponent. Functionally, some habits can be changed or improved over a five- or six-day period, but there’s something to be said for simply embracing what a team or any given player is or isn’t. Quarterback Sean Clifford, for example, has long been prone to the bad decision or inexplicable pass turned interception. It’s unlikely that something which has been a part of his long career will change in 13 days if it hasn’t changed over the last several seasons.
So often it’s less the challenge of fixing absolutely everything and rather making small steps with the right attitude. The approach to improvement itself often dictating the results.
“I feel like it starts with the energy and not coming out flat,” receiver Parker Washington said about winning the bye week. “Having real solid days every day and feeling good about those days. It’s about correcting those small things. If we take a step with those I fell like we’ll go 1-0.”
As for more specifics there’s quite the list to work through. From Franklin’s perspective ball security — a tangible thing to improve on — looms large after a game which featured eight combined turnovers and four Nittany Lion fumbles. However that’s not the only thing Penn State will have to work on if it wants to come out the other side of its three-game stretch with something to show for it.
5-0? Sure. A perfect record but certainly not a perfect team.
“We’ve done what we needed to do up to this point to be 5-0, but we have to get better,” Franklin said after Saturday’s game. “We’re playing a really good Michigan team on the road. We haven’t spent a whole lot of time on them yet […] but come [game day] that’s when we have to be ready. There’s a lot of work that goes into that. I have a ton of respect for them and their program, their organization and their coaching staff. But we have done what we needed to do up till this point. By being 5-0, we’ve won a lot of different ways. I think there’s value in that. I’d love for them all to be pretty wins and sexy wins, but that’s not the game we play.”
“After tonight, the thing that jumps out to you is ball security. And that’s ball security in the running game. Especially on this night like this, what we call capping, where you take the extra hand over the ball. The decision making that we’re not throwing the ball and putting the ball at risk. Those things are important. Doing a better job in short yardage situations. We worked really hard to get to short yardage situations. We got to do a better job of executing them. And then the same thing on the defensive side of the ball, not necessarily tonight, but third-and-long. We’ve done a pretty good job of getting the third-and-long situations that we’ve let people off the hook. We got to be better there. Our PAT field goal protection in the middle. We made some subtle adjustments there with personnel and some techniques and I thought that that was better tonight. So we’ll continue to build there. But there’s a lot of areas. We will look at ourselves. We’ll do across the ball self-scout, and then obviously we’ll also get a head start on our opponents. And that’ll be kind of a blend this week and next week.”
In the eyes of longtime safety Ji’Ayir Brown taking that next step as a team isn’t necessarily complicated in theory but certainly easier said than done. It’s improved execution, it’s taking what you know and turning it into plays. As coaches and players often say, if everyone does their job, then winning isn’t that hard.
And doing your job well, that means a constant improvement of instincts, making a mental game less about thinking and more about simply doing.
“You have to know your assignment. You can’t remember it — you have to know it.” Brown said on Saturday. “So it’s making sure all our guys on the team know their assignments, instead of remembering them. Because we you remember something you can forget it, but when you know something, you know something.”
Come back in 13 days to see how much the Nittany Lions know.
