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C O A C H S P E A K • E X C E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S W E E K L Y P R E S S E R Penn State is 16 for 16 in the red zone with 15 touchdowns and you've been good defensively, just four touchdowns on eight possessions. How much do you emphasize that? And are there one or two things that you see that maybe explain that hot start? We emphasize it, there's no doubt about it. I think we've done a good job in open- ing drives. We've emphasized the impor- tance of starting fast. … There's no doubt that we're scoring touchdowns at a high rate in the red zone. And that usually puts your team in a really good position to be successful. In the red zone, you've really got two different storylines. I think a lot of people focus on touchdown success in the red zone compared to field goals. If you're kicking field goals in the red zone, that's going to come back to get you beat at some point. So obviously we emphasize the touchdowns. But I think the other thing that's proba- bly just as important is red zone trips. That's something that we spend a lot of time talking about as well. You want to get into the red zone as much as you possibly can. That's probably even a stronger indi- cator of offensive success than anything. The more times you get to the red zone, good things are going to happen for your ball club. So we talk about that a lot. But I think Trace [McSorley] obviously has got a good feel for that. I think Ricky [Rahne] has done a really good job for the offensive staff at having a plan for how your offense needs to change in the red zone. I think one of the things that we've done a good job of is getting into 12 per- sonnel, which is something we hadn't done in the past, and being able to run the ball and be more physical in that area of the field. Typically, your playbook shrinks because you lose your vertical passing game in some of those shots down there. So the best teams year in and year out in red zone performance are the ones that run the ball the best. So I think that's helped us. We spend a lot of time talking about sit- uational football, understanding how to operate in those different areas and those different field zones and those different situations. And I think our guys have em- braced it. You've scored just before hal8ime in all three games, and then you add in the tying touchdown in the fourth quarter against App State. What's been the key that you've seen to your two-minute offense so far? I mentioned this last week to you guys, if you go back to even our first game, we've been pretty good in two-minute situations, and we spend a lot of time on it. Instead of coming up with some arbi- trary two-minute situations, we're using actual two-minute situations that we've been through or that our guys have watched on Monday Night Football or whatever it may be. I think there's a lot of value in that and it's helped us tremen- dously. Obviously, having an experienced quar- terback factors into that as well. I don't think there's any doubt about it, but I do think the way we train, the way we talk, the way we plan helps too. Whenever you're able to put those types of game- winning drives together, obviously that is critical to your success. But also being able to get some momentum before half- time changes the complexion going in at halBime, or changes the feel when you're coming out aBer the half. I don't think there's any doubt about it. Like I said, we spend a lot of time talking through four-minute, talking through two-minute, talking through coming out. And I think where we've probably done a better job is [recognizing that] the game of football has changed. So some of the rules of how football is played and how situations should be handled have changed. When you're running a different style of offense, if you're running a spread-style offense, your four-minute philosophy or your two-minute philosophy is different than if you're a pro-style huddle team and you need to kind of grow and morph and understand those things and evolve. We've spent a lot more time as coaches talking through situational football. I think one of the things that we've done in terms of adding a 10th coach is that per- son having some more responsibility on game day, giving me someone to talk to other than the offensive and defensive staff, someone who I can bounce ideas off of throughout the game who's not focused on the offense or defense. I think that's been helpful as well. So I think we've just been very inten- tional about it, and I've been pleased with what we've been able to do. We all learn based on how we practice. … I annoy the video staff and the administrative staff because whenever I'm watching college football or NFL football, if I see some- thing, I'm sending it so we can show our players during the week examples of guys who didn't handle things well and it comes back to bite the team in the rear end. So we spend a lot of time talking about all these things, and I think it's helped us. How has Sean Clifford responded to being the backup quarterback the past couple of weeks? And how close is Tommy Stevens to returning? Once again, we won't get to talking about injuries and things like that. Again, I understand you've got to ask the ques- tion. But Sean has done a really nice job in his role. It's hard to argue. I think he's completed every single pass and 50 per- cent of them for touchdowns and one for the longest touchdown in the history of Beaver Stadium. So pretty good start. Pretty good start for him. He's gotten a lot of reps over the last year and a half in practice. He's extremely competitive. He's extremely prideful. It's very, very important to him. He is focused. He's locked in. So I think in a lot of ways this has been a blessing in disguise. If Tommy had been taking the reps that he had been normally taking in practice and games, then maybe Sean wouldn't have been able to get this opportunity. So now we've got three guys who have all played in games and played at a pretty high level. So I think in the long run this is a real positive for us. But we expect to have all three of those guys available for Friday. We expect to have all those guys available for the game this week that happens to be on Friday. And I will share this with you: If we S E P T E M B E R   1 9 ,   2 0 1 8 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 10

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