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T H E 2 0 1 9 S E A S O N schools, but once you start the recruiting process that kind of goes out the win- dow," he said. "You're not guaranteed to get an offer from the school you love." For a while, it appeared that he would end up at Duke. He even gave the Blue Devils a verbal commitment. But then he changed his mind, and soon thereafter, a number of big-time schools extended of- fers. He visited Oregon and LSU, among others. But when Rivers began getting cold feet, the offer that Brooks really wanted suddenly materialized. He was going to play for Penn State, after all. But not for a while. Brooks redshirted as a true freshman, and he backed up John- son last year, finishing with 30 tackles to rank 14th on the team. He's still behind the experienced senior this season, but his role has expanded and is likely to turn into a starting job next fall after Johnson has graduated. There's a lot to be said for having back- ups who are nearly indistinguishable from the starters. And while it might be natural to assume that the second-team players would begin to chafe at their roles as backups when there isn't a lot of sepa- ration between the various rungs of the depth chart, the Nittany Lions don't ap- pear to suffer from those sorts of petty jealousies. To hear Franklin tell it, there are two reasons for that. "The first thing," he said, "is that on de- fense we play a lot of guys, so that helps. They're getting a good amount of reps. "The other thing is, if the second-team guy respects the first-team guy, that helps. Because he understands it. It's not just a coaching decision. He sees the same thing. And I think that's what you see throughout our team. The guys who are No. 2 who are very productive and are good players, they have a lot of respect for the guy who's in front of them, and that helps the dynamic." The success that Luketa and Brooks have enjoyed as backups has helped to send a message to the younger players who are even deeper on the depth chart, players who have four- and five-star pedigrees of their own but who don't yet have the experience of the players ahead of them. The message: Sit tight. Your time will come. One of those new players is Smith, the highest-rated player in Penn State's most recent recruiting class. Smith could hardly have begun his college career more emphatically. In the season opener against Idaho, he lowered his shoulder and knocked Kiahn Martinez backward just as the Vandals running back ap- proached the first-down marker. It was the last of Smith's three tackles that day, and while it took place long after the game had been decided, it was one of the moments that everyone was buzzing about afterward. Through seven games, Smith was tied for 16th on the team with 12 stops and had shown more than enough flashes of potential to excite the coaching staff about his future. Franklin said Smith's continued devel- opment will hinge on his understanding of the ways in which opposing offenses are "trying to put him in binds, trying to get his eyes dirty in terms of what he's looking at." "As those things continue to clear up for him and he gets more comfortable and more confident, I think he's got a very bright future," Franklin said. "There aren't too many 6-4, 240-pound line- backers who can run and hit with the in- stincts that he has." The other four-star linebacker in Penn State's most recent class was Lance Dixon. The West Bloomfield, Mich., na- tive came out of preseason practice with a "green light," to use the staff's parlance, meaning that the coaches weren't plan- ning to redshirt him. Those plans changed a few weeks into the season. As of this writing, Dixon had played in only three games and might end up redshirting after all. Given the depth that's been assembled at linebacker across multiple classes, with Brooks and Luketa making major contributions and players such as Smith, Katshir and Dixon showing flashes of ex- cellence, it's possible that the Lions have only begun to tap into their true poten- tial. "Ellis has played, but this is where he's getting the most experience and getting the most reps," Franklin said. "So you're going to see him I think get better and better each week, and then guys like Brandon Smith and Katshir and Luketa, same thing with those guys. Just the amount of reps that they're getting, they're going to gain confidence and play faster and they're all very instinc- tive guys, but the game is going to slow down for them. We're excited about that unit." ■

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