Blue White Illustrated

T H E 2 0 1 8 S E A S O N omething was different this year. Ryan Bates could sense it. It wasn't necessarily some- thing tangible, but when he and his fellow Penn State offensive line- men would get together, which they did with some frequency, Bates could tell that things had changed. "Our chemistry hasn't been like this," Bates said recently. "The chemistry is awesome. We're all friends. We all hang out outside of football. I think that's what makes us connect. We're all on the same page a lot of the time. We trust each other. The offensive line is about trust. I've got to trust that the person next to me is going to do his job, and he's got to trust that I'm going to do mine. I think that's the biggest thing with our offensive line right now: We trust each other." It's often been said that on- and even off-field cohesiveness are the keys to the success of any offensive line. The tangi- bles matter too, obviously, the heights and weights and off-season testing num- bers that determine whether a lineman has the physical tools to perform at an elite level. But when James Franklin pre- dicted this past summer that this year's offensive front would be "a strength of our program," he was talking in part about the starters' ability to function together as a unit. "The game of football always has started and always will start up front," Franklin said. "We feel really good about that group." So far, it looks as though the coach's preseason assessment was right on the money. Through their first six games, the Nittany Lions were second in the Big Ten in rushing offense with an average of 251.8 yards per game. The only team ahead of them was Wisconsin, a perpet- ual leader in rushing offense, at 269.7 yards per game. In addition, the Lions had scored 22 touchdowns on the ground, a total that placed them among the na- tional leaders. | S READY TO RUN Penn State's linemen get ready to face Ohio State. From left to right: Menet, Gonza- lez, McGovern, Bates and Fries. Photo by Steve Manuel

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