Blue White Illustrated

P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> running back. Through the first six weeks of the year, he was second in the Big Ten in rushing with 700 yards. His seven rushing touchdowns led the league, and his average of 6.7 yards per carry was third. As if to underscore his emergence as one of college football's bright new stars, a few days after the App State game, Sanders turned up on the cover of Sports Illustrated. His friends blew up his phone with texts as soon as the cover began making the rounds online, but Sanders' reaction was characteristically muted. "I'm speechless and blessed," he said. "It's interesting." Interesting is not a word that one would readily apply to Sanders' first two seasons as an understudy to Barkley. He saw ac- tion in 25 games and rushed for 375 yards during his freshman and sophomore years. There were occasional flashes of potential – a 29-yard touchdown dash against Georgia State last year, a 48-yard kickoff return to open the game against Iowa in 2016 – but it was hard to argue with the coaching staff's Barkley-centric approach to game planning. Sanders didn't redshirt, so he could have transferred without losing a year of eligibility. But instead he stayed at Penn State, took advantage of the opportunity to learn from Barkley's example, and waited for his opportunity to arrive. In so doing, he became, in Franklin's eyes, a model for how players ought to react to the challenges and disappoint- ments that the game is inevitably going to hand them at some point in their ca- reers. "We've made some rules to make it eas- ier to transfer," Franklin said. "I get it, but I worry, because I think most of us are using the game of football to teach life lessons, and the lesson of life is not to leave to go to the path of least resistance. It's to battle and fight and earn a job. Miles is a great example of that. He was sitting behind Saquon Barkley, maybe the best running back on the planet, and he just kept grinding and kept working and kept staying positive." Sanders has combined that determined attitude with an impressive skill set, and lately he's been showing off both. He can be a punishing runner, the kind who moves piles and rarely goes down on first contact. Following Penn State's Big Ten opener at Illinois, a game in which he gained a career-high 200 yards on 22 carries, Sanders was leading the FBS in yards after contact with an average of 5.22 per carry. That number was an out- growth of all the work he's done in the weight room the past two years, work that has added 20 pounds to his frame since high school. The idea is simply to overpower the guy who's trying to stop you. "Be the hammer," Sanders said, "not the nail." He's also less apt than his predecessor to try to make something out of nothing. As a result, he doesn't take a lot of losses. Through six games, Sanders had only lost 29 yards on 104 carries, and that, too, has endeared him to the coaching staff. Said Franklin, "Some- times, there's nothing prettier than an ugly 3-yard run." Sanders did lose 2 yards on one of the biggest plays of the season. With Penn State facing fourth-and-5 late in the fourth quarter against Ohio State, the coaches thought they might be able to get the first down on the ground, but the Buckeyes were ready for it, trapping Sanders in the backfield and leaving him with no opportunity to use his speed or his power. The coaching staff took plenty of heat for the call. It was the de- cisive moment in what would turn out to be a 27-26 loss, and while it surely would have been hailed as daring if it had worked, it didn't work, so it was mocked. No matter how one feels about that specific call, how- ever, you can understand the impulse to get the ball in Sanders' hands as often as possible. Throughout the sea- son, good things have hap- pened when the Lions have done that. "We love Miles. We think he's playing at a really high level," Franklin said. "He's growing and evolving and getting more comfortable in his lead- ership role. We're very pleased with him. We think Miles is one of the best running backs in the country. He's been a great teammate and is really evolving into a strong leader for us as well. I think as the year goes on, he'll continue to do great things for us." After the Fiesta Bowl last year, Barkley told Sanders to "save me some records." It seemed like the kind of friendly pep talk that a departing player might give to his successor. Now, though, it's looking like Sanders might own a record or two before he's done. Following his 200-yard outburst in Champaign, he found his mother and gave her a hug. "This is what you've been waiting for," Marlene Sanders told her son. Indeed it was. And as the yardage piles up, it's looking more and more like that wait was entirely worthwhile. ■ QUARTERBACK KEEPER McSor- ley was the Big Ten's eighth- leading rusher through the first six games of the season, averag- ing 74.5 yards per game. Photo by Steve Manuel

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