Blue White Illustrated

ly?" But at the same time, "OK, look, if you have this formation, what did you call it at Fork Union?" He'd tell me what they called it there. You can describe it to him over the phone and then he gets it and he can talk back to you. He says, "Here's what we called that." So then in the next phone conversation, you say, "Hey, remember? What did we call that [formation]?" If he can tell you, that's pretty good. I have a pretty good gauge. He's a bright guy. I think he's a mentally tough guy. I think people haven't made enough of that fact. When you go to Fork Union Military, it's not just [physical training] there. He went to high school there. That's a very, very disciplined environment. You have to march. It's a structured environment, and it's just not the easiest place to go. He's a disciplined kid, and I really like his demeanor. He's calm, he's smart, and I'm really looking forward to it. Of course, you're going to keep an open mind because he hasn't played to the speed of this game yet in college, so we'll see how that goes. But I'm definitely excited about training camp and working with him. I wish we could. I've been pretty adamant about this. I think that part of the NCAA rulebook is ridiculous. We're not allowed to encourage them to do anything. The summer is voluntary. That's why we're lucky we have fantastic kids here. That would be more of a question for a guy like Mike Hull or Glenn Carson – "How did seven-on-seven go this summer?" – because we can't tell them to do anything. I would imagine, knowing those guys – Amos, Hull, Malcolm Willis and Carson – that they probably threw the kitchen sink at them. They don't care about who is playing quarterback. My point there with the rules is: Why wouldn't we be allowed to work with these kids in the summertime as a coaching staff for a couple of hours a week? No more than that. ... When spring practice ends on April 21 with the Blue-White Game, from that point forward until Aug. 5 – when we'll have our first official practice – we're not really allowed to coach any football with these guys, especially during the summer months. That makes no sense to me, but that's the rule and we follow it. How long will it take in preseason practice to know what you're dealing with in terms of the quarterbacks? I've thought a lot about this. You're allowed 29 practices before your first game. So I think by the 14th or 15th practice, you've got to have a pretty good idea, because you need at least 15 practices to get that guy – whoever the starter is going to be – the bulk of the reps to allow him to really be as ready as he can be for Syracuse. Syracuse is a very good team. There are a lot of really good players. So we need at least 15 practices for a new quarterback to be ready to play. How do you gauge what works most effectively and consistently on defense while always keeping things unpredictable? We spent a lot of time this off-season as a staff. One of the things we did was we had a staff clinic. So every guy on the staff got up in front and I gave them different subject areas to talk about. That was a good twoweek-long session. We learned a lot from each other. One of the things that I learned – I had known this in the NFL, and a lot of times, things that happen in the NFL trickle down to college football – it's kind of a spinthe-dial mentality on defense that makes it hard on the offense. You keep them guessing and you go from even to odd to Bear to overload pressure from the boundary, overload pressure from the field. I think what we have to do and what John [Butler] has to do – Butler is a very sharp guy, a quick-minded guy – is to hopefully keep the dial When they compete in seven-onseven drills in the summer, is the defense encouraged to throw as much as possible at the offense? Is there any structure there in terms of how the defensive players should approach that portion of summer workouts? spinning. I think that's what makes it difficult on offenses. Offenses are so multiple and fast-moving. I think if we can communicate fast and get lined up, and we can spin the dial, I think that will be big for us. How does the conference's move toward dual-threat quarterbacks affect you? It seems like you're moving in a direction that is counter to the trend in the rest of the league. I'm pretty aware of that. I think we're always going to try to recruit the best kid that fits Penn State the best – not necessarily who just fits the offensive system. The system will always be built around whoever the quarterback is. I'm not opposed to having a guy who is a real dualthreat quarterback, I'm really not. But I really believe, at the end of the day, you've got to be able to throw the football. Look at Alabama, for example. I don't think anybody would argue that Alabama isn't the best in the country right now. They line up, the quarterback is under center, the running back is at home, they run the ball well, they play good defense, and they're a play-action team that can throw the ball accurately. That team is winning national championships. I think when you look at a lot of the other teams, they're close, too, and they have dual-threat guys. I think there's definitely merit to both offenses. I just have a strong belief that, if I have a guy who can throw a 20-yard strike on an in-cut consistently, accurately, that's the kind of guy I think we can succeed with at Penn State. I

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