Blue White Illustrated

A T T H E 2 0 1 9 N I T T A N Y L I O N S made him difficult to coach sometimes. Tommy Stevens was like that as well." If Clifford looks sharp in the spring and im- presses in the Blue-White Game – or if Stevens is slow to recover from his sur- gery – things could get interesting at a position where the battle had seemed to be a fait accompli. STAFF SAYS Franklin on Stevens' injury: "We had a lot of discussions about when is the right time to have the surgery, but Tommy's family and the staff decided the best time to have the surgery would be once his academics finished up and he got through the season. He was able to do that, and now this will allow him, hope- fully, to be full-go for spring ball." RUNNING BACK KEY RETURNEES Journey Brown, C.J. Holmes, Ricky Slade KEY LOSSES Mark Allen, Miles Sanders, Johnathan Thomas NEWCOMERS Noah Cain, Devyn Ford OUTLOOK First, the bad news: For the second year in a row, Penn State will head into the off-season needing a new starter at this position. Sanders' decision to leave after only one year as a starter was not unexpected, but it did reopen the hole that he had filled quite ably after Saquon Barkley left following the 2017 season. With 1,274 rushing yards as a junior, 3 more than Barkley gained in his final sea- son, Sanders will definitely be missed. Now, the good news: Franklin and his assistants have recruited really well at this position the past few years. Of the five running backs Penn State has signed since 2016, four have received four stars from Rivals.com. Slade will get the first crack at replacing Sanders in the backfield. He gained 257 yards on 45 carries in his debut season, averaging a solid 5.7 yards per carry in nine games. Brown saw minimal action as a redshirt freshman, gaining 44 yards on eight carries. Cain will also be on hand this spring after enrolling in January, and he'll be joined in the summer by Ford, who gained more than 6,000 yards and scored 102 rushing touchdowns in a re- markable high school career at North Stafford (Va.) High. Slade and Brown will be the only expe- rienced scholarship running backs in camp this spring. To date, they have com- bined for 301 yards. One wild card here is Holmes, a 6-foot-0, 215- pounder who sat out this past season after transfer- ring from Notre Dame. He will have sophomore eligi- bility in 2019. STAFF SAYS Franklin, on incoming freshmen Cain and Ford: "We've got two really good backs who are really mature. One will be coming in early and one will be coming in this summer. They're highly, highly pro- ductive guys. If you combine their stats, it's ridiculous. You look at Noah, what he's been able to do, obviously at IMG and his high school before that, it's impres- sive. Devyn had over a hundred touch- downs in high school, so we're fortunate to get two really good backs coming in here who are also highly competitive guys and both very mature." WIDE RECEIVER KEY RETURNEES Jahan Dotson, Daniel George, K.J. Hamler, Mac Hippenham- mer, Brandon Polk, Justin Shorter, Cam Sullivan-Brown KEY LOSSES Juwan Johnson, DeAndre Thompkins NEWCOMER John Dunmore OUTLOOK Penn State's wideouts will be looking for a bounce-back season in 2019. There's no other way to say it. They just weren't as reliable during the 2018 season as they had been in years past, and the statistics reflected that inconsistency. After leading the Big Ten in passing in BREAKING AWAY Slade had a 27- yard touchdown run in his first college game against Ap- palachian State. Photo by Steve Manuel

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