Blue White Illustrated

P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> the year with 13 catches for 203 yards. It also bears mentioning that the Lions have a very good tight end in Pat Freier- muth, who caught 26 passes for 368 yards and a team-high eight touch- downs as a true freshman last fall. So while it will be very young at re- ceiver this coming season, Penn State does appear to have the potential for a revival after slipping to seventh place in the Big Ten in passing offense. "There are some talented guys there who we're excited about," Franklin said. "And obviously we feel really good about the tight end position. … We're going to be young, but we're going to be talented. It's going to be exciting and really com- petitive." 3 Are there any position changes in the works this spring? The only one we knew about heading into practice was C.J. Thorpe's return to offense. This was not a surprise. When Penn State moved Thorpe from the offen- sive line over to defense last September, it was billed from the start as very likely a temporary switch aimed at bolstering the team's depth following a season-ending injury to backup defensive tackle Fred Hansard. As Franklin explained last Octo- ber, "I would still make the argument that his greatest long-term potential is on the offensive side of the ball." It appears as though the coaching staff's appraisal hasn't changed, because Thorpe was working out with the offen- sive linemen in February. Position coach Matt Limegrover shouted him out in a Twitter post Feb. 7 after the team's sec- ond winter workout session. Before being moved last October, Thorpe had risen to second team at right guard. Franklin admitted that the offen- sive coaches "weren't real fired up about losing him." The Lions have a vacancy at right guard this year, with Connor McGovern having left early to enter the NFL Draft. Des Holmes backed up McGovern after Thorpe moved to defense last year, so it's possible that the two returnees will battle for the starting spot. It's also pos- sible that Limegrover will want to try some other combinations. Penn State prizes versatility, and spring practice is a time for experimentation. That being the case, it's unclear where the 6-3, 328- pound Thorpe fits into the team's plans as he preps for his redshirt sophomore season. But it does appear that he fits in on offense. On the other side of the ball, it looked as though January enrollee Tyler Rudolph was set to begin his career at safety. The 5-11, 200-pound Rudolph had been a four-star cornerback prospect coming out of St. Thomas More in Waterbury, Conn. 4 How will Penn State adapt to the arrival of two new as- sistant coaches? You'd be well within your rights to wonder about this. Franklin has often talked about the importance of planning ahead and the gains that can be made simply by out-organizing your oppo- nents. He's the guy who writes down the names of young coaches who impress him, just in case he finds himself with a position that needs filling. And yet, of the four hires Penn State made last year, two just didn't pan out, with Corley and special teams coordinator Phil Galiano leaving after only one year in those roles. Franklin's other two hires – running backs coach Ja'Jaun Seider and tight ends coach Tyler Bowen – appear to have worked out marvelously, both on the field and in recruiting. But hiring is not an area in which you want to bat .500. Fortunately for Penn State, Franklin's average is higher than that. If you zoom out and look at all the hires he has made rather than fixating on last year's mixed bag, there are some pretty astute deci- sions in there. He was the guy who picked Joe Moorhead's name out of a stack of presumably impressive re- sumes, and when defensive coordinator Bob Shoop left for Tennessee, Franklin wasted no time promoting Brent Pry to the position. The only way those moves could have worked out better is if Moor- head had waited another year or two be- fore parlaying the offensive revival he spearheaded at Penn State into a head coaching job at a Power Five school. Before Corley was fired in January, Franklin had dismissed only one assis- tant at Penn State: John Donovan, his original offensive coordinator. Of the 10 assistants who made up his first Nittany Lion staff in 2014 (nine on-field coaches and strength coach Dwight Galt), five are still with the program five years later. Of the five who are no longer at PSU, four left for promotions and/or raises: Shoop, Josh Gattis, Herb Hand and Charles Huff. This year's new coaches are Parker, who will oversee the wideouts, and Joe Lorig, who has taken charge of the spe- cial teams. Both have had success in their specific areas. Parker was a re- ceiver in high school and college and has coached the position at Duke, Pur- due, Marshall and Tennesse-Martin. Lorig has eight years of experience as a special teams coordinator, including three years at Memphis, where his units consistently ranked among the national leaders in kick-return offense and de- fense and didn't allow a punt- or kick- off-return touchdown during his tenure. One of the problems at Penn State last year was that Corley was forced to adjust to a new role after he was hired. He had been brought aboard to coach the run- ning backs but was put in charge of the wideouts when Gattis left suddenly. Corley did have experience as a receivers coach, but his previous job was at Army, which uses a triple-option and passed for only 361 yards in 2017, his lone sea- son at West Point. Duke, by contrast, threw for 3,199 yards in 2018, and two of its wideouts – Johnathan Lloyd and second-team All- ACC choice T.J. Rahming – surpassed 50 catches. So Parker's experience as both a coach and player dovetail nicely with Penn State's needs this year as it works to turn a room full of young, unproven wideouts into reliable playmakers. As

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