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P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> ing staff has full confidence in him. He's exceptional at it. So we're extremely ex- cited to see him as a returning starter. Anytime he touches the ball, we think he can score. I think we have some young guys who are very capable as well who are on his heels, who are pushing him. Again, everybody needs competition to be able to do it, which doesn't allow anybody to become complacent. And that's not in DeAndre's makeup. He works at it. But we have some guys behind him who we feel very good about as well. BWI Does experience matter there? Sometimes it seems as though up-and- coming talent out of high school can just jump into that role. GALIANO I don't know. I'd much rather have a returning guy like DeAndre than have to rely on a young guy who has never done it. Not that the young guy can't do it, but doing it in high school in front of 1,000 people on a Friday night is a lot different than having to do it at our stage. BWI What else does an experienced guy bring to the table there? GALIANO You can play for your high school team and the reality is, you might not face one punter the entire season who is actually a Division I punter who is going to put the ball up there and give you four-point-something hang time. You've got all these dudes running down at you. So an experienced guy who has done it gives you the comfort to know that he's going to be able to field the ball. And the most important thing that we talk about in our return game is the football. We're getting the opportunity to get the ball back, and if we don't score with it, we want to give it to our offense because we know the weapons that our offense has, and they can go score. So ball security is the number one thing, catching it cleanly. And also making good decisions. Are you going to catch the ball or are you not going to catch the ball? Are you going to let it go into the end zone? Those things take reps: learn- ing it and experiencing it and doing it. It's easy for us to second-guess a guy off film, but I tell them all the time, you're out there and you make a high- speed decision and we're going to live with it. I trust your decision, because you're the one out there doing it. The ball is up there for five seconds in a sta- dium where it's hanging forever, and you've got 10 dudes running full-speed who are trying to take your head off. It's easy to judge it off film, but you're not the guy who has to do that. If you make a high-speed decision, we'll live with it, and you're not wrong. BWI Where do you stand with kick re- turn given the big role Saquon Barkley played back there last year? GALIANO I think we have guys who are more than capable of doing it, and it's just going to become, who is that guy going to be? We have a couple of guys who I feel really good about, and that's going to determine how it goes during training camp. What's their role going to be on offense and defense? How special are they with the football? Guys are going to be competing to earn that, and maybe it's more than one guy. BWI Are you comfortable sharing who any of those guys are? GALIANO Not yet. BWI In the summer, then, how much of it is knowing what to do with the cards that you have? At what point do you stop thinking about it? GALIANO I don't know that you ever stop thinking about it. Sam Williams, our special teams quality control guy, does an unbelievable job and he's put all the cutups together and put our play- book stuff together to get it ready for me, and I'll just start going back through that and trying to figure what we're going to do: How can we be better? What can we change? What can allow us to play faster? What did we like in the spring? What didn't we like? And we'll continually try to improve. I think that's the thing. It's never that it's my way and this is how we're going to do special teams. It's, "OK, who do we have? How can I put them in the best situations to be successful?" And we'll tailor what we do to allow our players to play fast and have success. ■ LETTERMEN RETURNING 2 P Blake Gillikin LS Kyle Vasey LETTERMEN LOST 2 PK Tyler Davis H Billy Fessler STARTERS RETURNING 2 >> Blake Gillikin (13 starts in 2017), Kyle Vasey (13) STARTERS LOST 2 >> Tyler Davis (13), Billy Fessler (13) S P E C I A L T E A M S F A S T F A C T S NET PUNTING 39.93 yds. (3rd Big Ten; 25th FBS) KICKOFF RETURNS 21.65 yds. (4th; 48th) KICKOFF RETURN DEFENSE 19.51 yds. (9th; 39th) PUNT RETURNS 12.19 yds. (2nd; 16th) PUNT RETURN DEFENSE 4.29 yds. (2nd; 20th) 2017 STATISTICS

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