Blue White Illustrated

he does. He thinks he can throw it through a keyhole at 60 yards.��� The son of two former varsity college athletes ��� his father was a quarterback at Virginia and Susquehanna, his mother a volleyball player at Lehigh ��� Hackenberg won the starting job as a sophomore at Fork Union and never gave it up, developing into a consensus fivestar prospect by his senior season and, according to ESPN.com, the No. 1 dropback quarterback prospect in the nation. He could have picked any school in the country to play his college football. Nick Saban showed up at Fork Union to sell him on Alabama, a school that doesn���t have to do a lot of hard selling these days. But instead he chose Penn State. Some might call that a gutsy decision. This was a school that hadn���t shown much interest in Hackenberg before last January, a school that never used to be known for grooming quarterbacks for the NFL. But he had made plenty of gutsy decisions on the football field over the years, and most of them had paid off. He���s confident this one will, too. Said Hackenberg, ���I liked a lot of other schools, but I loved Penn State. It���s where I felt most comfortable and where I felt I could maximize my potential athletically and academically.��� It bears mentioning that this is an entirely different Penn State program than the one that rose to national prominence decades earlier by playing gritty defense and keeping the risks to a minimum on offense. Under Bill O���Brien last season, the Nittany Lions borrowed chunks of the New England Patriots��� playbook. They went hurryup. They went no-huddle. They eschewed punts in favor of fourth-down conversion attempts. And caution wasn���t the only thing they threw to the wind. The Lions averaged more passes per game (38) than all but one Big Ten team, turning Matt McGloin from an afterthought into a contender for the league���s Offensive Player of the Year trophy. It was a breathtaking transformation, and it made an impression on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. ���I watched every Penn State game I could, just because I enjoy what they do,��� Sullivan said. ���What that staff did under the duress that they were under was just unbelievable. That had to do with a lot of young men playing exceptionally well, but they also changed what they were doing. They���re more of a pro-style offense. I coached two guys who played in the Big Ten: Eddie George and Chris Perry. The Big Ten is known for ���Let���s grind it out. It���s cold weather, the fields are wet, that���s what we���ve got to get ready for.��� Penn State has changed it to, ���OK guys, New England has done it in a bad weather area, and we can run this kind of an offense and be successful in the Big Ten.��� And they proved that they could.��� ���Bill O���Brien���s not afraid to do anything,��� added Jim Cantafio, who coached Hackenberg���s blue-chip classmate Adam Breneman at Cedar Cliff High in Camp Hill, Pa. ���He changes the pace of the game and makes it very difficult for opposing teams��� defenses. Penn State was very vanilla in the past. They���re not anymore. They���re not predictable anymore. They take chances.��� Despite all the flak Penn State���s offense has received over the years, Hackenberg is not the first blue-chipper to sign with them. Anthony Morelli was a five-star prospect according to Rivals, and Paul Jones and Rob Bolden each received four stars. All were given the red-carpet treatment on Penn State message boards when they committed. But none of them developed into elite college players. Bolden faded after a strong start and eventually transferred to LSU. Jones had academic problems and transferred to Robert Morris. Morelli started for two years but had an up-and-down career and fizzled in the NFL after joining the Cardinals as an undrafted free agent. The only Penn State quarterback of the past decade to succeed at the pro level has been Michael Robinson ��� and that���s because he also happens to be a pretty good running back. In seven NFL seasons, he has attempted only two passes. The performance of those players stands in contrast to that of Kerry Collins, the one Joe Paterno-coached passer to make it big in the NFL as a quarterback. Collins spent 18 years in the league, mostly with the Panthers, Giants and Titans. Cantafio was his coach at Wilson High in West Lawn, Pa., and he remembers Collins struggling for much of his career at Penn State before finally blossoming into a consensus All-American as a senior. He recalls, too, that when the stars of the unbeaten 1994 team started graduating, Penn State���s offense drifted back to the middle of the Big Ten pack. The Nittany Lions��� failure to develop NFL-caliber quarterbacks following Collins��� graduation hurt them in recruiting, Cantafio said. One of the best players to turn them down was Chad Henne, who threw for more than 7,000 yards in his career at Wilson. In 2004, Henne chose Michigan over Penn State for just that reason. ���He went to Michigan because of Michigan���s reputation for putting guys in the NFL,��� Cantafio said. ���Penn State just never did it. They weren���t producing the quarterbacks. It���s just the way it was.��� But that was nearly a decade ago. In the past year, O���Brien and quarterbacks coach Charlie Fisher re-engineered the passing game and in the process changed many of the preconceptions about the Nittany Lions. While at Vanderbilt, Fisher had helped turn Jay Cutler into the Southeastern Conference���s Offensive MVP and the No. 11 overall pick in the 2006 NFL Draft. Likewise, O���Brien���s work with Tom Brady in New England has given him instant credibility when he recruits quarterbacks. He���s able to show prospects how he worked with Brady, maybe explain to them where their skills overlap with those of a future Hall of Famer. Theirs has turned out to be a persuasive pitch, and Hackenberg, who is physically reminiscent of the 6-foot-4, 225-pound Brady, wasn���t the only one to buy in recently. The Nittany Lions also landed junior college quarterback Tyler Ferguson and run-ons Austin Whipple, D.J. Crook and Jack Seymour.

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