Blue White Illustrated

P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> few days before the start of his redshirt junior season, John Reid stood before a gathering of reporters after practice and talked about his impending return to action. He had sat out the previous year due to a knee in- jury, but now, finally, that ordeal was be- hind him – the surgery, the rehab, the recovery. All that was left was to get back on the field and start having some fun. "I'm ready to get back out there and compete again," Reid said. If this had been a sports movie, the scene that day outside the Lasch Building would have been the end of the training montage that precedes the emotional final reel in which the protagonist com- pletes his heroic comeback by leading his team to victory. But real life doesn't always fit into con- venient narrative arcs. Reid did return from his long layoff in Penn State's opener against Appalachian State. He started the game, in fact. And the Nittany Lions did win, albeit not nearly as con- vincingly as most outside observers ex- pected, squandering a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter and falling behind by a touchdown before rallying back to take the game in overtime, 45-38. But where the veteran cornerback was concerned, nothing else really went to plan. After a brief appearance, he re- treated to the sideline and wasn't on the field in the tense fourth quarter or in overtime. And the reason, as coach James Franklin later explained, was because he hadn't been all that effective early in the game. "John played like a guy who hadn't played for a year," Franklin said. "He did some things really good, but he did some things where he was a little bit inconsis- tent. "John's a perfectionist. He's like that in school, he's like that in football. It's really important to him, and he works really hard at it. But I think there was a little bit of rust on him." Reid didn't get on the field at all the next two weeks against Pitt and Kent State, and an accumulation of rust was not the only problem, as it appeared he was also dealing with an injury. Franklin is never forthcoming about the health of his players, so the reason for Reid's ab- sence against the Panthers and Golden Flashes was not clear. Still, as of mid- September, it didn't appear that he was in danger of missing another season. Franklin said prior to the Pitt game that he thought Reid "is going to have a huge year for us." So that feel-good comeback story may yet come to pass. If it does come to pass, no one at Penn State will be the least bit surprised. Before he was hurt, Reid was "playing at a really high level," Franklin said, and one of his primary assets – his thorough under- standing of the schematic aspects of the game – was unaffected by his injury. "He's always been an unbelievable stu- dent of the game and probably came in more mature than most freshmen," Franklin said. And like any [player], he's even further ahead just based on another year in the program. "I do think sometimes when you go through injuries like that, it puts things in perspective. I think he's probably grown more than a normal year because of the adversity he's had to overcome. John has been one of the most respected guys in our program really from his freshman year, and he just continues to build on that." Had all gone as expected, Reid would be in the midst of his final season at Penn State. He would be looking to make the most of his third year as a regular starter and would likely be getting set to take his shot at an NFL career, the latest pro prospect from a school that has been in- creasingly successful at developing next- level cornerbacks. It was a noncontact injury that changed those plans. Reid went down during a practice drill in the spring of 2017. The in- jury was later diagnosed as an ACL tear, and suddenly Reid's timetable required some significant revisions. Prior to the injury, he had been enjoying an excellent spring, the best of his career to that point – and that was saying some- thing. The former four-star prospect from Mount Laurel, N.J., had started 16 games during his first two seasons, quickly proving himself to be one of the top young players on a rapidly improving Penn State team. He was in the starting lineup for his very first college game, a visit to Temple in the Nittany Lions' 2015 season opener, and made one other start that year. As a sophomore, he started all 14 games for a Penn State team that led the Big Ten in pass-efficiency defense. But with his injury last year, all the mo- mentum he had built up during his fresh- man and sophomore seasons dissipated. He was forced to miss the entire season just as he was getting set for what figured to be the best year of his college career. It was a discouraging blow, one that resulted in the first extended absence of his foot- ball career. He underwent surgery later that spring and immediately began rehab- bing his knee. He also tried to stay in- volved with the team as best he could, serving as a de facto cornerbacks coach on game day. Reid would relay his observa- tions about opposing receivers to Penn State's defensive backs, helping them rec- ognize tendencies and anticipate moves. All the while, Reid was doing his rehab work, and doing it so diligently that Franklin said he could have played in the WAITING GAME John Reid's return was all too brief, but he's still a big part of PSU's plans | A

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