Penn State Football: Franklin, Smith and Clifford Dish Out Team Chemistry Tidbits

Coaches will often state that winning teams have a great locker room atmosphere. Sometimes you will even hear how a team improved its chemistry from the year before, or that this team “was one of their favorites.” The list of platitudes and praise continues on and on but it doesn’t reveal a whole lot about the characteristics of what makes that chemistry so good.

Because there is the inherit implication that if a coach or a player has a favorite team, that they might also have a least favorite team. A team that never quite got it together, or had locker room issues or simply couldn’t click. It was like pulling teeth and nothing could really change that.

So what do those good teams have? What makes them click? And how soon do you know what sort of team you have on your hands?

“You learn what your team is gonna be throughout the whole year, but I think you really learn about your team during that second summer session because that’s when you have everybody [on campus],” Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford said on Wednesday. “So you have all your new players, walk ons, everybody coming together. So I think that portion right there is a huge piece of where I’m like okay, you know, these are some guys we got to help bring along and this is where we we can improve.”

It can be an interesting time for a team first coming together after a few months away from football and with new faces arriving on campus to potentially take veteran players’ jobs. Everyone has a different work ethic, goals, expectations and a vision for the future. Making that all mesh can be a challenge.

And even Clifford knows that early on in training camp spirits are always going to be high. Everyone is undefeated in August, everyone has a chance to start in the opening days of camp. But as the days slog along, that’s when you start to find out more and more about yourself, and your teammates.

“It’s what you do on Day 11, Day 12, Day 13 – when it’s like nine o’clock at night, you’re still watching tape and [shakes head] gotta wake yourself up,” Clifford said. “You stand up, have a cup of coffee, whatever it might be. Those are the days where you really find out who your team is and how they react to pressure situations like that. And I think we’ve handled it really well.”

So that’s when you know what you might have on your hands, but what are you looking for? What are the keys to being the kind of teammate Sean Clifford – one of the most experienced players in college football – wants in his huddle? Well the first step is an open mind and a good ear.

“From my perspective, the great team or teams that I really just loved being a part of, are the ones that are open minded and ready to listen and not quick to react if you got something to say to them from from a leadership perspective. This team’s got that,” Clifford said. “Everyone’s super humble. We know where we’re at. We’re not happy with where we’re at. We’re ready to go for the season.”

From a coaching perspective the viewpoint is much bigger picture. In the eyes of cornerbacks coach and longtime James Franklin assistant Terry Smith, the best teams are the ones that players are leading and running. If the vibes are good and players are accountable to each other, coaching becomes a whole lot easier. And the easier your job is, often the winning comes easier too.

“We come to camp and we kind of start to figure out if this team is a player led team or is it a coach led team and I think our team is more player led,” Smith said. “We’ve got great leadership from the top guys. I think they are the foundational leaders of the team. Each position has its own leaders on the team and you know, those guys police each other and they hold each other accountable. They know what it’s supposed to look look like. And I think this team has the chance to be pretty special.”

In Smith’s view a player lead team can make all the difference, and while the Nittany Lions will still have to navigate a difficult schedule full of tests at home and on the road, if they start to play for each other and lead each other, they could create something special in the process.

You don’t have to look far for the evidence either, leadership wasn’t in short supply in 2016 and 2017 and Penn State managed two of its best back-to-back seasons in program history in the process.

“Player led team,” Smith said, reiterating his preference. “If the coach is policing all that goes on in a locker room, their investment isn’t all the way committed [to football]. So player led teams – they love themselves, they love the locker room, they love each other, and they’re playing for each other and they’re playing for all that comes with it. This is a very similar setup to how we were in [20]16 and [20]17. Trace McSorely and those guys – we got an opportunity to just one day at a time chip away at.”

As for James Franklin, he has been a bit more guarded about what fans might expect from this team in 2022. Perhaps the fact the Nittany Lions are 11-11 over the past two years or that a big contract comes with big expectations.

In any case Franklin appears happy with where his team is at just a few weeks from opening the season. But like everyone else in the country, the joys of an undefeated August can turn quickly into the sorrows of a complicated September.

“You’re hopeful in the beginning of the season of what can be,” Franklin said. “I have not been in the experience too often in my career as a head coach where I really struggled with the team. You hope that you don’t go through that, you have enough relationships an experiences that you can get to a good place. I do think we’re in a good place right now.”