Going deep with the Nittany Lions’ scheme, returning personnel, and unknowns
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Oregon guys preview us. Interesting breakdown. They do film review and deep dive some stats. You can tell on some fronts they don't have any sources to gather from (Safety, for example, they don't have any expectations of Lane nor Toure when Lane seems primed to start by most of us here), but they at least have an outside perspective and go by what is available.
Wow, the author of that must have turned that in for his PHD thesis!!
On Offense
- Great point about the fact that PSU's 3 portal WR's mostly all played on the inside. But his comment on Clifford being the WR that plays outside to compliment them seems off base to me. Clifford doesn't get deep unless a play breaks down and extends and he seems more limited to the inside than the 3 transfer WR's. Wonder if that might get a surprise WR into the lineup more than what we seem to expect. Denmark or Gonzalez or ??? Hopefully Howard has the talent to play outside.
- Don't know where he got his belief that Birchmeier is the "new Cousins". Williams was somewhat moved to the inside, although he played some at OT this Spring due to injuries. If Williams stays inside he's likely the top inside backup. It wouldn't surprise me to see Onoh or Shanahan ahead of Birchmeier either. But having those 4 as backups seems like a great problem to have.
On Defense:
-Interesting review of how he sees the strengths and weaknesses of the 3 DC's and what he believes might have been behind Knowles leaving oh-high-ya and coming to PSU.
-He and his informant some how missed the fact that Gilliam has played and practiced himself into the rotation ahead of the other open competition for the DT rotation behind Durant and Ford. So for his goal of a 2 deep Barnes is really only looking for the 4th. But Franklin will want a competent 5th and hopefully 6th such that an injury and/or defection like Beamon's last season doesn't bring the DT rotation down to mainly 3 players like it seemed to do down the stretch last season.
- Who ever Andrew is must not have listened to Franklin on where DE shaked out after Spring practices, as Harvey seems to have stepped up and I believe was identified as likely in the rotation for 2025 and Kemajou has also been given enough praise to make me believe he's not redshirting. Where as "Andrew" gave this guy info that none of the true freshmen DE's are expected to contribute.
- Robinson was the most athletically gifted? Rojas has shown he's the best athlete among the returning LB's. He states that a 2nd time in discussing how PSU might replace all of the tackles King made. I believe Rojas is not only more athletic than Robinson, but bigger as well. PSU will miss Robinson as a LB in the rotation, but maybe Campbell will make us forget that to a good degree as Robinson wasn't a proven B10 LB either. PSU needs Campbell to step up at Mike regardless of if he starts or subs in within situationally with Rojas, DeLuka or whoever. Nelson does seem like the wild card at LB as the current PSU roster lists him at 6'3", 234 lbs making him one of the bigger LB's on the roster, coming from a move from Safety.
- When I got to his analysis of Safety, criticizing Reed and Wheatley pretty harshly, that put some of his other comments more in perspective and made me question his "charting" statistics/conclusions. Obviously Reed played pretty well and was highly praised by Franklin after a couple of the bigger wins last season. And Wheatley is likely to continue as PSU's turnover king unless teams try and test Harris too often. He was "astonished" the Texans drafted Reed, but it's more likely the Texans know what they got in Reed than this guy.
- He misses that Lane didn't redshirt, was a key backup the whole 2024 season and is definitely in the battle to start opposite Wheatley.
- At CB he glosses over the four true freshmen even though anyone that follow the team and this past Spring practice should know that Dixon has an excellent chance to play (not redshirt) this coming season and have some kind of role.
Overall I guess about as thorough as an opposing team's fan could assemble, but with some misses that had info out there after the Spring.
And he puts too much emphasis on each players high school rating, especially for non true freshman players. As Franklin has said every player starts their first practice as zero stars. But when someone's trying to do a prediction on a team they seem to not know much about that's what they may revert to.
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