Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1138762
U pon his introduction as Penn State's new special teams coordina- tor in March, Joe Lorig offered up three letters he had chosen to define the ap- proach he planned on taking toward his area of expertise: C-T-G, or Change The Game, as he would come to elaborate. Given the Nittany Lions' sometimes troubling recent history on special teams – they finished 68th nationally in net punting, 72nd in punt returns and 84th in kickoff return defense last sea- son – a change for the better will be wel- comed in Happy Valley moving forward. Blue White Illustrated's Nate Bauer sat down with Lorig recently to learn more about how he intends to bring about that change in the season ahead. BWI You've been described by some of your players as bringing a "different en- ergy" to special teams this spring. Do you know what that means? LORIG I wasn't here before, so I don't know what the energy was before and frankly I don't care what the energy was before. I think you've just seen a culture shift. That's what we do with special teams – we build a culture. I'm a longtime defensive coordinator. It's not rocket science. All I do is build the culture exactly like you build an of- fensive and defensive culture. Everybody talks about it, but no one actually does it. We actually do it. We actually do what we say we're going to do. We treat the punters like we treat the quarterbacks. We treat the position coaches on special teams just like the position coaches on offense or defense. It's a we thing, not a me thing. That's kind of a cool little say- ing, but we actually live it. Special teams is not me. If I'm the cor- ners coach and I'm coaching the bullets on punt, when they mess up, everybody shouldn't look at me because I'm in charge of special teams. We don't do that on defense. When the safeties mess up, everyone doesn't look at Coach [Brent] Pry automatically. They know he's ultimately responsible for it, but they look at the safeties coach or the corners coach. We try to install that exact same concept in special teams, so we have positional coaches, we have po- sitional meetings, and just build it that way. And I think through doing that, the players see much more accountability from the coaches rather than everybody just trying to put it on one person. It be- comes a group thing. And when it's a group thing, then everyone has individ- ual accountability. Again, it's exactly the same as offense or defense. It's not really rocket science. I don't know why more people don't do it that way. BWI When you say culture, is that code for simply taking it more seriously than other programs do? LORIG No, I don't know that they take it less seriously. Number one, it has to come from the head coach. A lot of head coaches – obviously I'm speaking gen- erally – are former offensive coordina- tors. Many offensive coordinators are quarterbacks coaches. What a lot of people in the fan base and the media might not realize is, quarterbacks coaches and offensive coordinators are not involved in special teams at all. They have zero involvement. Coach [Ricky] Rahne has never been to a special teams meeting because quarterbacks don't do special teams. There are some very rare examples [like] the New Orleans Saints, but when they get the head coaching job, they don't really care because they don't know. They've never been involved in it. It has to come from the head coach first, and then it's just doing what you say you're going to do. It's playing your best players. It's allotting time in meetings. It's allotting time at practice. And yeah, I think taking it seriously. BWI Kickoff, field goals, and kickoff- return defense were three issues you pointed out from last season at your in- troductory press conference. LORIG I spent spring break in the of- fice. I didn't have anywhere to go be- cause I had just moved a couple of times. So I wanted to get a feel for the team and what I was stepping into, not just statis- tically. So I watched all the film, and what really stood out to me was, we were bad on kickoff. And we were not great on field goal. Good at times, not good at times, but inconsistent, taking into ac- count that guys were freshmen who were in that position, but Ohio State doesn't care if they're freshmen. You're still playing against them, right? So those were things that really stood out to me as being bad. And then really just comparing. … I don't know this league. I've coached in major college football but not in the Big Ten, so I just didn't know what the level of expectation was. We were 44 percent touchbacks, for instance, last year. At Memphis, I was 78 percent. So just try- ing to correlate that. BWI Kickoffs out of bounds. LORIG [Penn State] had six kickoffs out of bounds. We had one at Memphis. BWI How does that work? Where does that rank for you? LORIG Obviously, it stuck out enough for me to talk about it. I don't want to disparage a player, and I'm not sure what target you're teaching him. Was it the player, [or] was it what he's being told? I wasn't here to know and I definitely don't want to disparage our players, so I'm not sure. That's why I say I was just trying to correlate it to what I know. What I knew [in three seasons at Mem- phis] is that we had one out of bounds. Well, six to one, obviously that's just something that stands out, because when you kick the ball out of bounds, it P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> T H E K I C K I N G G A M E SOMETHING SPECIAL New coordinator Joe Lorig works to put his imprint on the Nittany Lions' kicking units