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| HICAGO – New England Patriots offensive lineman Dan Connolly played his college football at Southeast Missouri State, starting 46 consecutive games and earning AllConference recognition all four seasons. After signing with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2005, he made the 53-man active roster but played in only four games. He was placed on injured reserve in 2006 and was waived by the team the following year but was picked up by the Patriots the next season and spent two years on Bill Belichick's practice squad. He landed a spot on the 53-man roster in '09, and has been a full-time starter – save for a few injuries – the past three seasons. The lesson, as former Patriots assistant turned Penn State head coach Bill O'Brien recently explained, is that full-time contributors can come from unexpected places and, maybe more important, that coaches should pay closer attention to the development of younger, less-heralded players. Player evaluation is going to be more important than ever the next few years as the Lions try to cope with severe NCAA sanctions by getting the most out of every player on their roster. "We've got a plan right now to do a better job with the developmental players," O'Brien said while attending Big Ten Media Days last month, "whether it's on the Dirty Show or maybe some younger players who play a little bit in the game but don't play more than 20 plays." Like most top college programs, Penn State has over the years focused on starters and second-stringers during the course of the regular season. Third- and fourth-string backups and walkons – players who are unlikely to see much, if any, game action – have received few practice reps. Typically, the coaches have used bowl practices and spring drills to scrutinize players residing in the lower reaches of the depth chart. But Penn State had to make adjustments last season because of the NCAA sanctions, and with the scholarship roster dwindling even further this year, there are more changes in store. For instance, unless the team's overall health forces him to change plans, O'Brien intends to match backups and Dirty Show players against each other on Monday afternoons in a scrimmagelike environment. Graduate assistants will call the plays on both sides of the ball, while the team's starters and regular contributors perform conditioning work with strength coach Craig Fitzgerald. "We're going to have basically a Dirty Show developmental scrimmage," O'Brien said. "I'm going to watch it from afar and just run our base pack- ages and just let the guys play. "I thought about that a lot in the offseason because I remember one of the best things that Bill Belichick did in New England was, after every practice, he would take the practice squad guys and any developmental player who was on the 53-man roster who maybe wasn't playing a lot and [focused on them specifically]. They couldn't scrimmage because they didn't have enough players in the NFL, but maybe he had drills, one-on-one offensive line/defensive line, wide receiver/DB, seven-onseven with the wide receivers, DBs and quarterbacks." O'Brien said Belichick's approach to player development and evaluation could also pay dividends at Penn State. It worked for Connolly, and as O'Brien explained, a big part of the lineman's success "has to do with the improvement [he made] in those post-practice sessions. So I'm going to try to do something like that this year for those types of guys." I Waffle Brownie in the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel www.thepennstaterhotel.psu.edu 814-863-5080

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