Blue White Illustrated

2 0 1 8 K I C K O F F S P E C I A L Franklin conceded. The uprights, he said, "are so tight. But we're using that for our kickers. You know: Aim small, miss small." In their four-plus years at Penn State, Franklin and his staff have gone to great lengths to mess with the minds of their special teams players. They have lobbed tennis balls, squirted water and aimed air horns at kickers as they've lined up to at- tempt field goals during practice. Some- times, they make the return specialists field punts wearing boxing gloves. The idea is to see who's best at maintaining his concentration. That task is especially important this year, as the Nittany Lions have some rather large vacancies to fill. They need to find a kickoff returner to replace Saquon Barkley, and although they return an ex- perienced punt returner in DeAndre Thompkins, they also have a few young players such as K.J. Hamler and Mac Hip- penhammer who may deserve an oppor- tunity to try filling that role on Saturdays. But the main concern is at place kicker, where three-year starter Tyler Davis must be replaced. The Lions have five candidates for Davis's former job, six if you count punter Blake Gillikin. There's Jake Pinegar, a scholarship player in the Class of 2018. There are true freshman walk-ons Rafael Checa, Vlad Hilling and Justin Tobin. And there's Carson Landis, a redshirt freshman who was the only full-time kicker on campus this past spring. As for Gillikin, he has game expe- rience, just not as a kicker. The Lions' starting punter the past two seasons, he hasn't kicked since he was a senior in high school. With an abundance of candidates to as- sess, the tennis balls will no doubt con- tinue to fly as the Lions approach their opener against Appalachian State. Said special teams coordinator Phil Galiano, "Just like at every position, we're going to compete in everything we do and put them in challenging situations and give them an opportunity to go compete and win the job." Franklin has insisted that he would pre- fer to let his specialists focus on their par- ticular discipline, which would seemingly put Gillikin at a disadvantage. Galiano said the junior punter "is talented enough that if we needed to, we could move him C O A C H S P E A K P H I L G A L I A N O ON PUNT RETURNS We are still plan- ning for DeAndre [Thompkins] to re- turn punts. I think what he did last year is really good. As I've said before, he's able to score whenever he touches the ball. That's one of the things we're looking for. He's also a veteran guy who makes great decisions, and we know we can go out there and trust him. He's going to take care of the football and go make the fair catch when he needs to or run up and catch it so that the ball doesn't hit the ground and we lose yardage. We're extremely excited about DeAndre. But it's like any position on our team. There's competition. Before I got here, John Reid was a punt returner who had done a really good job early in the sea- son. We have a couple of other guys. Mark Allen is very capable of doing it. We have a younger guy in K.J. Hamler who we are really excited about. So we have a lot of options. Mac Hippenham- mer is a guy who is very sure-handed who can do it. I hope I'm not leaving guys out. We've got a lot of options, and like with everything, we're going to compete. ON KICKOFF RETURNS Kick returner for us, obviously it's an open competi- tion right now. We have guys on our roster who have done it before: Miles [Sanders] has done it, [Brandon] Polk has done it, Nick Scott has done it, Journey Brown, we'll see what he can do there. So we have a bunch of guys and... those guys are catching kicks every day and they are charted, every catch. Was it clean? Was it a good decision? Every- thing is charted and tracked. And not only are our coaches giving evaluations and opinions day a9er day a9er day, but we also have statistical value that we are able to go back and see, as well. ON JOURNEY BROWN He hits a crease, he's gone. There's no one who's going to catch him, so that excites me. And how physical and how strong he is. One of the things you're looking for in a kick returner is a guy who is able to hit a hole and break tackles, and he's a big, physi- cal, strong, fast runner, which excites you. ON NICK SCOTT He's been phenome- nal, and he still will be. How many spe- cial teams he will start on will be determined [by] what his role is on de- fense. But he's still going to be a guy who is very, very involved in everything we do, even from a meeting and leader- ship standpoint. But we do have a lot of young guys who we're super excited about. You take a look back at last year, and guys we are expecting bigger things from, like Garrett Taylor, Zech McP- hearson, Tariq Castro-Fields, we're ex- cited about those guys from a back-end point. And then some of the linebackers that we have: Jarvis Miller, he's doing a phenomenal job for us. Johnathan Thomas is going to be a very big part of things that we're doing. I'm sure I'm leaving some guys out. We counted about 13 to 15 guys right now who we feel we can go in with who are going to be major contributors on special teams for us. ON THE NEW KICKOFF RULES I don't think it changes what we're looking for, to be honest with you, because the guy back there had to be a great decision- maker anyway. … What we want is a guy who, every time he touches the ball, can score, and a guy who we can trust to make great decisions and take care of the football, because that's the most important thing. ■

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