Blue White Illustrated

ON HAVING A YOUNG TEAM The posi- tive is that you've got a bunch of guys who are hungry and are excited and who have something to really prove and have got a chip on their shoulder. I don't think there's any doubt about that. Obviously, the negative is that you lack experience, and experience counts – experience playing major-college football, experience playing in Beaver Stadium, experience playing in all these di;erent venues where we are going to go. That is a factor, there's no doubt about it. But that's our job. Our job is to help these guys gain as much experience and as much con:dence as we possibly can, and also create depth. The other area [where it] probably will show up is on special teams. You know, a lot of times, those guys who you're looking for from a depth per- spective on o;ense and defense, they may have signi:cant roles on special teams, and it's impacted our depth there, there's no doubt about it. I think there are arguments that you can make in both directions. Obviously for us, we're focused on all the positives, but we have an awareness of the chal- lenges that come with it. ON DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP There are guys who are thrust into leadership roles who probably under typical situ- ations would not be. K.J. Hamler is a guy like that, for example. He's kind of the old guy at the position in some ways right now. So yeah, I think you're always putting a priority on developing leadership through your entire roster, when you have a big team like football with 125 guys – that goes back to our philosophy of having not just two seniors as cap- tains, because you want to make sure that you're having an impact and being able to relate across your roster from freshmen all the way through seniors, o;ense, defense and special teams. ON PICKING A PLACE KICKER It's probably no di;erent than any other position. We have our individual peri- ods and things like that. We bring them over to the stadium. I think it's important that they get to kick in the stadium during practice. But just like every other position, we chart and grade everything. We have a gut feeling of what we think, but then we can go back and actually check the data. At this level, everybody in our organization, everybody in our pro- gram can do it. It's the level of consis- tency. It's, you know, who is the guy who's going to do it consistently to give our team the best [chance] to be successful? There may be a guy who can hit a 60-yarder, but obviously the value is the guy who can hit from 40 yards and in at a very, very high rate. ON RICKY RAHNE I think there's no doubt, year two as a play-caller obvi- ously makes a di;erence. I think every assistant coach feels like they know what it takes to be a coordinator. Every coordinator feels like they know what it takes to be a head coach, but when you sit in those chairs and have that type of responsibility, it's di;erent. Ricky learned a lot over the last 12 months. As you know, I've got a tremendous amount of belief and faith in Ricky. We've been together for I think 11 years. I've watched him de- velop, and I know how talented he is. I think everybody in our program, within our walls, is extremely excited about the steps that we can take o;en- sively. ■ 2 0 1 9 K I C K O F F S P E C I A L curred. Sometimes we were able to [hold leads] in particular games and others we weren't. But more than any- thing, I want to make sure we have the right mindset. To have a lead in the fourth quarter and give it up is upset- ting for all of us." The roles were reversed in the Citrus Bowl last January, as Kentucky took an early lead, forcing the Lions to attempt a comeback. But even though the circum- stances were different, the need to have a "closer's mentality" was on a lot of minds when the season concluded. "Cam Brown immediately following the Citrus Bowl in the locker room kind of addressed the kids, addressed the team and talked about that type of trait, being a finisher and where we fell short and what we could have accomplished if we had closed out some games," Pry said. "So it's something that has been talked about in our room." As they head into the 2019 season, the Nittany Lions have been defined as much by what they haven't done lately as by what they have done. They haven't beaten Ohio State or Michigan State since 2016. They haven't reclaimed the East Division title since their miraculous turnaround three years ago, and as a re- sult, they haven't returned to the Big Ten Championship Game, nor have they earned a spot in the CFP. It would be easy for those within the program to take offense at the implica- tion that its failures deserve as much at- tention as its successes. After all, only 10 of the 130 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision have ever made the playoff, and of those 10 teams, only four have made multiple appearances. If anything less than a CFP appearance constitutes a disappointment, then there are going to be a lot of disappointing seasons to come. Dynasties are hard. But there's another way of looking at all this, and that is to put those disap- pointments into context. Penn State is one of only six teams to finish in the top 15 of the Associated Press poll each of the past three seasons. Its past three re- cruiting classes have ranked among the top dozen in the country according to C O A C H S P E A K E X C E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S R E C E N T P R E S S E R S

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