Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1072455
A T T H E 2 0 1 9 N I T T A N Y L I O N S and teammates have chosen to look at it. "It's going to benefit him in the long run," offensive coordinator Ricky Rahne said, "because the games don't always go the way you want them to go all the time, either. You're going to have to fight through adversity, and how your quar- terback reacts is critical. Attitude re- flects leadership, so if your leader knows how to deal with adversity, then your team is going to obviously handle that much better." Rahne said the time that Stevens missed helped him to develop a grasp of the entire offense rather than going through practice dwelling on what he did in his last rep. "I think that he was able to see a lot more and get the whole big picture," the first-year coordinator said. "I think he did a really nice job with that." One of the ways that Stevens stayed involved even when he couldn't practice was by standing behind fellow quarter- backs McSorley, Clifford and Michael Shuster during drills and passing along his observations. "After every single one of our reps, he was writing down notes, giving us pointers – what he saw versus what we actually did, whether he saw the same thing, all that kind of stuff," McSorley said. "So he's been doing everything he can to make the team better, and he's had a really good attitude about it. Peo- ple talk about adversity making you stronger. This is one of the things I think will make him better. He's had to grow as a player but without having actually been on the field as much as he would have liked." While Stevens has paid his dues, he will have some competition during the off-season. Clifford turned heads early in his redshirt freshman season while filling in as McSorley's backup, com- pleting all five of his passing attempts during the regular season, with two of those throws going for touchdowns. Both of his pass attempts in the Citrus Bowl were incomplete, but the first was a thing of beauty, a deep pass down the THE POWER OF 2 Stevens had his season cut short by injuries, but he still finished fourth on the team in rushing in 2018 with 118 yards on 28 car- ries. Photo by Steve Manuel