Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1043117
tion of opposing defenses keying more on Miles? And how concerned are you about Trace taking extra hits with all the extra carries he's been taking lately? In general, my concern right now is Trace is carrying too much of the load on offense. That's something that we need to do a better job of. We need more players having a bigger impact on the game on of- fense. Miles really is starting to take a step. I thought last week was his best game. I think that's probably my biggest concern with everything. We need to spread out some of those big plays and some of those runs and some of those catches, and just overall, the offensive production needs to be spread out a little bit. That's what I would say. I think sometimes there's a misconcep- tion that we're running Trace more or that we're using Tommy [Stevens] as a decoy or things like that. We really don't do that. If Tommy is in the game, he's part of the read and the de- fense will determine whether he gets the ball or not. Most of Trace's runs are going to come from one of two things. It's either a scramble off of a normal pass play or it's some type of read where it's a zone read or some type of RPO. It's not necessarily that we go into the game saying Trace is going to run the ball this many times or we're going to throw the ball to this guy. Our offense doesn't really run like that. You know, if Tommy gets the ball thrown to him, it's because the read told us to throw the ball to him. If the ball is not thrown to Tommy, it's not that he's been a decoy, it's that the read told us something else or we read it wrong, and then it's the same way in the quarterback run game. It's all pretty much RPO-based. We don't have a whole lot of just straight called runs in our offense. You've said that a lot of the time your defense is really more of a 4-2-5 than a 4-3, and I'm wondering if that changes a little bit against this oppo- nent. What are the challenges in par- ticular for linebackers against a team that runs it pretty well but also has two tight ends on the field who are re- ceiving targets? Yeah, it's challenging. I think whenever you can be multiple like they are out of one personnel group – and not just do it, but do it well – it's challenging. You guys have seen us in the past against these types of teams. Maybe you play more reg- ular personnel where you have three true linebackers on the field. I think you guys have also seen us play just like when we play some passing teams we'll get into what we've called our wild package, which is three or four defensive ends on the field. I think you guys have also seen where we put three to four D-tackles on the field at the same time to maybe be a little bit more stout at the defensive end position. There are a lot of different things that we do, and obviously it's all week to week based on our opponent and what they try to do. Yeah, this will be a challenge for us. Obviously completely different style and approach than what we saw last week. Journey Brown played a little bit on Saturday. Ricky Slade had been the guy at other times to come in. What has Journey done to warrant more playing time, and are you still looking for a go-to guy who can come in and give Miles a rest with Mark Allen out? Ricky was a little dinged up, and Journey has had two really good weeks of practice. There was a lot of conversation as a coaching staff last week. The conversa- tion last week was about Journey really starting to do some good things. He's got a lot of giBs, he's got a lot of talents, but I think early on in his career, he was just thinking a lot. You're starting to see him think less and let those talents come for- ward. But we felt very comfortable putting him in, and he did a nice job. So I think his package will continue to grow, and then I think Ricky I think has got a chance to grow and learn from the expe- O C T O B E R 2 4 , 2 0 1 8 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 11 Franklin greets tight end Nick Bowers as he returns to the sideline during Penn State's game against Indiana last week. Photo by Steve Manuel

