Blue White Illustrated

WHAT A SHORT, STRANGE TRIP IT'S BEEN Brenton Strange's ascent to the top of the depth chart has been even quicker than expected. What's next for the Lions' promising young tight end? earned praise from receivers coach Taylor Stubblefield. At 6-4, 198 pounds, Meiga is an especially in- triguing prospect. He grew up in Canada, where he had 67 catches for 1,564 yards and 14 touchdowns in his last two years at Cegep du Vieux High. He spent his first season at Penn State getting accustomed to the American game, with its smaller field and less wide-open style of offense, but he could be an impact player in the years to come. "You just look at Malick's size: big shoulders, long arms, he can run, is fairly quick. Obviously, there's an ad- justment from Canadian ball to American ball," Stubblefield said. "But the ingredients are there. He's just young, so it's about developing, trying to make sure that we can get him better." One encouraging sign for Penn State is that the receiver corps wasn't plagued by dropped passes last sea- son – at least not to the extent that it had been in previous years. When Dotson and Washington were tar- geted, they came down with the football. That might sound like faint praise, but clean catches were hardly assured during the 2018 and '19 sea- sons. Another encouraging sign is that Stubblefield is going to be working with the wideouts again in the com- ing year. That, too, might sound like faint praise, but it's not. The 2021 season will be the first since 2017 in which the Lions have brought back their receivers coach from the year before. QUOTABLE Stubblefield on the Lions' five true freshman receivers, Washington, Lambert-Smith, Meiga, Dottin and Black: "I really like that class. I think that class has done a good job. There's definitely growth that needs to be made and development, but that's the reason they call me Coach, right? It's to help develop those guys so that they can see their mark and fill the role that T o Penn State's coaching staff, Bren- ton Strange was always a tight end. Never mind that he had been a wide re- ceiver in high school. Never mind that he weighed about 210 pounds. The Nittany Lions had a vision for the four-star West Virginia prospect, and that vision in- volved calories, weight plates and a move to a new position. "I remember when I would come here on recruiting visits, Coach [Dwight] Galt would always tell me that I could put the weight on real fast," Strange said. "I re- ally didn't believe it. I thought it would take at least two years." Whatever concerns he may have had about his career trajectory at Penn State, they didn't affect his decision. He com- mitted to the Nittany Lions in October 2018, shortly before wrapping up a stel- lar tenure at Parkersburg High in which he broke school records for most career catches and receiving yards. And once on Penn State's campus, he discovered that the team's veteran strength and conditioning coach had been right about how quickly he could expect to make the necessary physical transformation. "It took about two to three months," Strange said. "I was looking like a com- pletely different person." Strange's fast development – he weighed 248 pounds this past fall, a 34- pound increase from his listed weight as an incoming freshman – ended up being a significant factor in Penn State's 2020 season. That's because the staff was forced to accelerate his timeline when starting tight end Pat Freiermuth had to undergo midseason surgery for a shoul- der injury he suffered in week two against Ohio State. The surgery ended Freiermuth's Penn State career, as he's now preparing for the NFL, and it turned Strange into the Nittany Lions' first-team tight end five games into his redshirt freshman season. Strange responded to that challenge by excelling as both a pass catcher and a blocker. He finished the season with 17 catches for 164 yards and two touch- downs, amassing 14 of those catches after taking over the starting position in week five against Iowa. With Zack Kuntz and true freshman Theo Johnson also contributing, the Lions were able to continue counting on their tight ends, even though they didn't have the serv- ices of Freiermuth, who would later be named Big Ten Tight End of the Year, for more than half the season. "Obviously, the room has done a great job filling in for Pat, and those aren't easy shoes to fill," tight ends coach Tyler Bowen said. "What we pride ourselves on in the room is that there's no drop- off, there's a standard. I really do believe that year in, year out, we have an oppor- tunity to be the best tight end room in the country." | >>

• Cover