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T H E C L A S S O F 2 0 1 9 >> The roster those players are joining boasts a number of very talented players, but it's also a bit thinner than a lot of peo- ple thought it would be heading into spring practice. Since the end of the 2018 regular season, 14 players have entered the NCAA's transfer portal. As of this writing, only one of those players – safety Lamont Wade – had opted to return. The other 13 had either found new schools al- ready or were presumed to be leaving. There are a lot of reasons for the wave of departures. Some of those players want to be closer to home, others are looking for a fresh start, still others want to maximize their one final season of eligibility by heading to a school with a specific need at their position. The one thing most of the players have in com- mon, though, is that they've seen their playing time at Penn State eroded by the younger prospects in more recent re- cruiting classes. Penn State's performance in the Rivals team rankings rose sharply beginning with the Class of 2017. The three classes prior to that group's arrival ranked 24th, 15th and 21st. But the 2017 class was 12th, its successor was fifth, and this year's class has continued that surge, placing first in the Big Ten in addition to its stellar national ranking. Those younger players in the '17 and '18 classes have now acclimated to the college game, and right behind them are the 2019 signees, 11 of whom are already on campus. As those players ascend, the opportuni- ties for the veteran back- ups from previous classes diminish. Those older players have paid their dues, but maybe they aren't as big or as fast or as athletically gifted as the new guys. What do you do if you're, say, Danny Dalton, eager to see action but stuck behind a player like Pat Freiermuth who looks as though he's going to dominate the tight end position at Penn State for at least the next two seasons? You leave for Boston College, where there's a better opportunity. Of the players who have left since the end of the 2018 season, the only ones with starting experience are receivers Juwan Johnson and Brandon Polk. Los- ing Johnson is going to hurt. He had an erratic, injury-plagued junior year, but he was very effective in 2017, tying for second on the team with 54 catches for 701 yards and winning honorable men- tion All-Big Ten honors. As for the other losses, they will likely have a bigger im- pact on the team's depth than on the composition of the starting lineup. Even Polk, a seven-game starter in 2018, es- sentially disappeared from the team's plans late in the season, due in part to a series of dropped passes but also to the rise of freshman wideouts such as Jahan Dotson. Maybe in the coming years, the rate of attrition will level off as the imbalance between the classes is less pronounced and upperclassmen aren't being dis- placed quite as often by freshmen and sophomores. But a certain amount of at- trition is inevitable given the level of competition that the coaching staff wants to see. "I tell guys all the time, I'm going to go out and recruit a linebacker next year to beat you out, and you're going to be crazy enough to help us recruit him," Franklin said. "That's what we want to create, that type of mentality, and we're starting to get [to a point] where you know that if you start here, you've earned it. I mean, it's a battle to do that. That wasn't always the case, obviously, when we first got here." It sure wasn't. When Franklin took over Penn State's sanction-wracked pro- gram in 2014, recruits would show up on campus and immediately find their names on the two-deep if they happened to play a position of extreme need. Thanks to several years of robust re- cruiting, that's no longer the case. The Nittany Lions are getting their share of the nation's elite players, and while they've lost some veterans along the way, the program's overall talent level has been trending in the right direction. If you're a Penn State fan, you, too, had reason to smile on signing day. ■ NEWEST LION Caedan Wal- lace poses with Franklin at a visit in De- cember. Wal- lace is one of the highest- rated players in Penn State's 2019 class. Photo cour- tesy of Wal- lace family

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