Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1220211
S P R I N G P R A C T I C E R E P O R T
with the one already in place in the hope
of
maintaining some level of continuity.
Penn State finished second in the Big
Ten in scoring offense last season with
an average of 35.8 points per game, so
you can understand why Franklin would
want to take that approach.
And yet, it's hard to know how much
continuity can be preserved when only
two offensive coaches remain from last
year's staff. The two holdovers are tight
ends coach Tyler Bowen and running
backs coach Ja'Juan Seider. Joining them
this year are offensive line coach Phil
Trautwein, receivers coach Taylor Stub-
blefield and Ciarrocca. Trautwein and
Stubblefield
were both in the Atlantic
Coast Conference last year, the former
at Boston College and the latter at
Miami. But that's about the only con-
nection between the new staffers. None
of them have ever worked together pre-
viously.
Since Franklin took over the program
in 2014, the Nittany Lions have never
had this much off-season upheaval on
either side of the ball. They've lost a few
coordinators over the past six years, dis-
missing John Donovan after the 2015
season, watching Donovan's successor,
Joe
Moorhead, leave for Mississippi
State
after two seasons, and losing Bob
Shoop to Tennessee in 2016. But even
though
Moorhead took running backs
coach
Charles Huff with him to
Starkville, the Lions didn't have as many
offensive vacancies to fill in the winter
of 2018 as they did in the past three
months. It also bears mentioning that
Rahne took three PSU offensive graduate
assistants and an offensive analyst along
with him to Old Dominion.
How those changes affect Penn State's
on-field performance will be one of the
big storylines of spring practice. After
players who have yet to catch their ;rst
collegiate pass: redshirt freshmen John
Dunmore and T.J. Jones, and early en-
rollees Jaden Dottin and KeAndre Lam-
bert-Smith.
Stubble;eld said his goal this spring
will be to work on the receivers' funda-
mental skills, as well as their under-
standing of the o