Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1366480
I t would be impossible to draw a straight line from the cancella- tion of spring practice last March to Penn State's 0-5 start in the fall. There were plenty of unusual circumstances in 2020, and the Nittany Lions were hardly alone in having to find creative ways of coping with the unprecedented hardships that the pan- demic inflicted. But it certainly didn't help that the Lions were forced to shut down all in-person football activities just days before their off-season drills had been set to begin, especially with four new coaches having been hired in the winter. It's now been a little over a year since COVID began wreaking havoc with... well... pretty much everything. And while campus life is still far from normal, enough safeguards have been put in place to enable teams across college football to conduct their spring practice regimens. As far as Penn State's players and coaches are concerned, those drills are likely to make a big difference come September. "Spring ball is a huge part of the off-season," defensive back Keaton Ellis said. "You get a lot of good work in, and missing that work can hurt a team, especially with a new coordinator, stuff like that. [There are] new people, new players, so it's been great. I've been able to spend a lot more time with the guys. We weren't able to [do that] last spring and summer." In a typical spring, Penn State allows media members to watch a small portion of its practice sessions each week, and it wraps everything up by inviting the general public to the Blue-White Game for an unfiltered, if often unrevealing, view of how things are shaping up. That wasn't the case this year, but PSU did allow fans and media into two practices in late April, and it also made a number of players and coaches available for in- terviews throughout the spring. Here's a position-by-position roundup of how things are looking for the Lions coming out of spring drills: QUARTERBACK The objectives here were to get a re- vamped offense installed, bring returning starter Sean Clifford up to speed as quickly as possible, and put backups NO TIME TO WASTE After last year's hiatus, the Nittany Lions take full advantage of the chance to stage real spring practice sessions again |