Penn State Football: Nittany Lions Have Stars at Receiver, Question Will Be Consistency Behind Them

“Just give me the ball.”

That’s ideally what you want to hear if you’re Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford standing in the huddle at Beaver Stadium or working at practice on the Lasch Building fields.

In many ways the whole enterprise of being a quarterback is a fairly straightforward one. Take the ball, find the open man, get him the ball. Yes it isn’t that easy, nobody said it was easy, but in a perfect world it’s not Clifford’s job to win the game on his own, it’s his job to get the ball from Point A to Point B.

And that job is a lot easier when it involves Jahan Dotson and Parker Washington.

All told Penn State has 14 players on its roster that are listed as wide receivers. Most of them won’t make an impact this season, but almost all of them have a chance to help make Clifford’s job even easier.

Because it starts with Dotson, who has an opportunity to further his legacy at Penn State with a solid final season. He is quiet, but he is explosive, he is unassuming but he is deadly with his hands and surprisingly sneaky on his feet.

And then it goes to Washington, not much louder than his counterpart but an interesting mixture of shifty receiver meets physical running back. He looks bigger and stronger at 5-foot-10 and 207 pounds – technically the second heaviest receiver in the room behind the 212 pounds of Benjamin Wilson and he isn’t afraid to throw that size around.

Sure, in 2020 the NIttany Lions may not have done much right in the early stages of the year, but Washington and Dotson did their part along the way to become one of the more consistent and dynamic one-two punches in the Big Ten.

Beyond them? That’s the real question. Of course Clifford will throw plenty of passes to tight ends Theo Johnson and Brenton Strange (save that for tomorrow) but receivers are the true threats down the field and the more of them you can bring to the table the harder opposing defenses have locking them down.

Take for example former Nittany Lion and big game guru Saeed Blacknall for example. Blacknall was never the flashiest guy in the room for Penn State in 2016, but he showed up when his number was called, racking up six receptions for 155-yards and two touchdowns in the Big Ten Title game. He also had a 35-yard reception in Penn State’s upset over Ohio State.

So Penn State needs to find its Blacknall. It could be Daniel George, a 6-foot-2 redshirt junior who has quietly been waiting in the wings for a moment to shine. It could be the lanky KeAndre Lambert-Smith or redshirt senior Cam Sullivan-Brown who has seemingly been in the program for ages.

Perhaps it will be Malick Meiga at 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds, one of the tallest Nittany Lions on the entire roster.

The good news for Penn State is that it has options. The bad news is that options are not answers and as the 2018 season showcased, you can have all sorts of choices and all of them can take turns dropping the ball.

What Penn State needs from its receivers this year is the same thing it needs as a program. Consistency. It already has playmakers in Dotson and Washington, and yes it will happily find another to go with them, but what it needs from its third and fourth receivers is a consistency to make the play when the ball is thrown that way. It needs the sure-handedness of DaeSean Hamilton and the well-timed moments of Blacknall.

Easier said than done? Perhaps, but no less important.

Find consistency in those options down the roster and suddenly Clifford’s job of getting it from Point A to Point B, becomes a whole lot easier. Don’t, and maybe Dotson and Washington can carry the load, but they may not be able to carry far.