Off Season and Spring Practices Articles thread.....

GregInPitt

GregInPitt

Well-known member
Hasn't been much to read about the team, but there will be some articles as the Winter conditioning goes along and the spring practices progress leading up to the B/W game.

Here's one that was interesting.

www.si.com

Penn State Coaching Staff Details Quarterback Rocco Becht's Rehab Progress

Becht is recovering from offseason surgery but is expected to throw this spring for the Nittany Lions.
www.si.com www.si.com

www.si.com

How Terry Smith's Role Has Changed, and Even Grown, at Penn State

The Nittany Lions' former interim head coach has resumed his role as the associate head coach and cornerbacks coach. But it's a "bigger" role now.
www.si.com www.si.com
 
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This is some high praise coming from Coach Campbell. Hopefully, Rocco can get healthy again in the spring.

"He's one of the greatest leaders I've ever been around," Campbell said. "This poor guy had to play with a torn labrum in his non-throwing shoulder. He had to get shot up every Tuesday and Wednesday just to practice the last four weeks and play, and the guy gave us every chance to win every one of those games every step of the way. He's as tough and as competitive as any football player I've ever been around."
 
GregInPitt said:
Hasn't been much to read about the team, but there will be some articles as the Winter conditioning goes along and the spring practices progress leading up to the B/W game.

Here's one that was interesting.

www.si.com

Penn State Coaching Staff Details Quarterback Rocco Becht's Rehab Progress

Becht is recovering from offseason surgery but is expected to throw this spring for the Nittany Lions.
www.si.com www.si.com

www.si.com

How Terry Smith's Role Has Changed, and Even Grown, at Penn State

The Nittany Lions' former interim head coach has resumed his role as the associate head coach and cornerbacks coach. But it's a "bigger" role now.
www.si.com www.si.com
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Awesome article on "Coach T". Thanks for sharing.
 
jjw165 said:
This is some high praise coming from Coach Campbell. Hopefully, Rocco can get healthy again in the spring.

"He's one of the greatest leaders I've ever been around," Campbell said. "This poor guy had to play with a torn labrum in his non-throwing shoulder. He had to get shot up every Tuesday and Wednesday just to practice the last four weeks and play, and the guy gave us every chance to win every one of those games every step of the way. He's as tough and as competitive as any football player I've ever been around."
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He doesn’t have a canon, but he genuinely has “touch” on the ball that I haven’t seen in Happy Valley for 25 years. Also Seems to have a little bit of “Trace-like” winner mentality . Should be a good year.
 
GregInPitt said:
nittanysportsnow.com

Is Offensive Line Penn State Football’s Strongest Unit in 2026?

Four starters on Penn State football’s offensive line graduated or declared for the 2026 NFL Draft. They don’t get as much love as quarterbacks, running backs, or receivers, but the men in the trenches are often looked at as the true backbone of a successful offense. Needless to say, head coach...
nittanysportsnow.com nittanysportsnow.com
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My favorite part was “There’s almost two-and-a-half deep on that O-line, and I don’t know who the starters are going to be, but they’re going to have to go earn it,” Campbell said. “We’re going to have to see who can consistently be the guys.”

I like the guys that they talk about as the anchor, but I like the way Campbell is setting up competition the most. Also, nice to know there is depth that he feels good about. If this OL comes together, the offense has a chance to be one of the best in the Big 10. I'm not wowed by WR, but we are solid enough and QB check, TE check, RB check, and if OL is strong, then this offense can be very good.
 
LudicrousSpeedGO! said:
Some serious talent at QB in this conference.
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Yes. But outside of the top couple QB's who seem like studs Becht has the opportunity to perform as well as the next couple that are ranked above him, especially if Becht does the running for first downs that he did for ISU. Just has to be smart and not get hurt. Moore and Sayin are very good, but the teams they play for make them seem even better than they are. It doesn't take Tom Brady to get the ball to Ohio St.'s WR's.....
 
LudicrousSpeedGO! said:
My favorite part was “There’s almost two-and-a-half deep on that O-line, and I don’t know who the starters are going to be, but they’re going to have to go earn it,” Campbell said. “We’re going to have to see who can consistently be the guys.”

I like the guys that they talk about as the anchor, but I like the way Campbell is setting up competition the most. Also, nice to know there is depth that he feels good about. If this OL comes together, the offense has a chance to be one of the best in the Big 10. I'm not wowed by WR, but we are solid enough and QB check, TE check, RB check, and if OL is strong, then this offense can be very good.
Click to expand...

Even with the Olinemen that went into the portal (Boyer who started at left OT in the bowl game, Shanahan who was a likely starter had he returned, Williams a former top recruit, Birchmeier, Troutman and O'Hara - a starting unit for some P4 teams) OL was a position that had good numbers and talent returning. Really didn't need a real big influx of transffers and true freshmen. The couple of inside OL players from ISU and another Center put the OL in a great spot for competition.

It seems that OT's are the hardest to find, develop and have sufficient depth, but with Donkoh coming back and being a true future NFL stud, and the 3rd year player Sexton along with 2 talented redshirt freshmen that likely are also ready to play in Goodman and Aliciene that OT also is very likely a top B10 position. And I believe one of the IUS transfers is also a young talented OT.

It's a tough assignment to replace 4 starters of a very good OLine, but all the competition could result in an OL just as good or better.
 
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Really interesting comments by Stephon Morris. I think Franklins stay has to be measured in context. It’s not all good or all bad. He’s a good coach who did a lot of great things at PSU but couldn’t get them to the highest level. As someone who really liked what he did I’m comfortable saying that now. But there were some cracks in the armor. Interesting to hear his comments at VT now. He recently acknowledged that he made mistakes at psu and will be different in some ways. Looking to see what and how MC does things. Embrace the change.
 
Creamery said:
Really interesting comments by Stephon Morris. I think Franklins stay has to be measured in context. It’s not all good or all bad. He’s a good coach who did a lot of great things at PSU but couldn’t get them to the highest level. As someone who really liked what he did I’m comfortable saying that now. But there were some cracks in the armor. Interesting to hear his comments at VT now. He recently acknowledged that he made mistakes at psu and will be different in some ways. Looking to see what and how MC does things. Embrace the change.
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Yep, I was a consistent fan of Franklin but not so much now. There's no defense for his obvious in game decisions that resulted in big game losses to OSU and other teams particularly when his team was ahead in the 4th quarter. Also totally stupid calls such as going for it on 4th and 1 or 2 in his own end in the first half. Just plain stupid "strategy". He recruited very well but also consistently came out short vs OSU in head to head battles for top players. Good and bad. He also played PSU into more money in his contract extension than I believe he was worth, but that's on the inept PSU administration that seems to have fumbled the ball in key situations on a consistent basis.

But when he stole the nucleus of the 2026 class that leaves me with a negative feeling regarding him such that I can't say I'm rooting for him to have success at VoTech.. A couple of those players are significantly better talents than VoTech could bring in to their program in the past. We'll see if Franklin can recruit at that level going forward. But other than the results of head to head recruiting battles with PSU I'm going to do my best to forget about him going forward.....
 
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I was also a big Franklin supporter and argued that he consistently was able to get PSU above our recruiting rankings in the polls. That was until last season when he completely fell apart. I feel like he gave up and quit. In hindsight, he's shown hints of that before the collapse. I just had trouble seeing it. I felt like if we could just get slightly better top talent then we could get over the hump because we felt so close. I now don't think that was what was holding us back. It was Franklin.

As Greg already said, the way he played Ohio St or really anyone who had better talent was a tell. He coached afraid IMO and to just keep it close. He took care of business against teams with inferior talent unless it was the week after Ohio St. That's the other tell IMO, how he would let Ohio St beat him 2 weeks in a row. He wasn't resilient. A loss took weeks to fully flush out of the system. That's a lack of toughness IMO.

Franklin appeared to be a fun coach, a player's coach, and we saw guys take to him in recruiting. He didn't seem too big on discipline to me. We constantly had penalties to extend drives at key times. Some of these were celebration penalties that are just a lack of discipline. And the team seemed to respond poorly when things got tough. When things were fun, they rolled. Apparently, it wasn't very fun after Oregon this year. And that UCLA plane ride was probably even less fun. Franklin had to go.
 
Campbell can get started on putting Franklin in his bottom feeder ACC conference place by beating him out for 2027 QB Peter Bourque, 6-foot-4, 220-pounder from Massachusetts that recently decommitted from Michigan.

www.si.com

No. 8 QB Prospect Heavily Linked to Two Major College Football Programs

The 2027 recruiting cycle has warmed up in the first month of the 2026 college football offseason. Most of the significant prospects in the 2027 recruiting cycl
www.si.com www.si.com
 
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