Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/260491
E T H E C L A S S O F 2 0 1 4 ■ days and they don't even visit campus and commit. That's been interesting, and that goes back to what we've been reinforcing all the time: It's about rela- tionships, and those kids and families were comfortable with us, and obviously Penn State speaks for itself. Were you able to fill the needs that you were looking to fill, or were you unsure what your needs were because you haven't had that much time to deal with the current team? Of the three biggest needs that I looked at just looking at the roster, the most glaring is offensive tackle. We had two scholarship offensive tackles in the program. That's not the position that you want to be in, so that was a priority for us, getting offensive linemen with length who can play offensive tackle. After that, the way we looked at it was that safety was another issue. We had a little bit more depth at that position, but we're top-heavy in terms of graduating three seniors at the safety position [fol- lowing the 2014 season]. Again, that was a little bit of an issue for us. I think there are only two under- classmen left after those guys, so we had to help ourselves there. After that, to me you look at our roster, and we've got a quarterback who we feel really good about, and it would be a shame if we didn't find some talent to surround him with. I'm not saying that we don't have that in the program already, but building more depth and more playmakers at the tight end position and at wide receiver [was a priority], and I think we helped ourselves there. You look at the tight end position with Gesicki. I don't know if I've heard of a kid who was invited to the Army All American game and the Mc- Donald's All American game in basket- ball. That's impressive. The wide re- ceivers that we were able to track – our coaches did a great job recruiting those guys, but it helps when you have Hack- enberg. He's going to attract those guys as well. You mentioned having connections with the guys in the last month, all these recruits you brought in. Were any of them guys you just started re- cruiting? Or had you spoken to them all before while you were at Vander- bilt? We were not going to get in a situation where we come to Penn State, find a guy who we don't know a lot about and start recruiting them. That's a recipe for dis- aster. We weren't going to do that. We wanted to make sure we knew these kids, knew their families. We had been recruiting them for a long time. That's why you see [something] uncharacteris- tic of a Penn State recruiting class in that these guys come from all over the country, probably more so than maybe any recruiting class we have had here. That's because of the relationships we had previously. You and your assistants have used the word "length" a lot to describe this class, particularly in the second- ary. How much of a priority do you place on height and length when you're recruiting defensive backs? We have all been places where you've got a good defensive back but he's 5 8 and he's in great position and does everything right and still can't make the play, so the length is important. If you're going to recruit a guy who's undersized, he'd better have tremen- dous leaping abilities and ball skills. Ball skills make guys bigger because they can play the ball. So that's impor- tant. That's very, very important for us. The other thing where length is impor- tant is in growth potential. I'm a big features guy. I like to recruit guys with massive heads, big hands, long arms and big feet, because that shows growth potential. We talk about that all the time, recruiting guys with big features. Those guys have a chance to grow into big, physical guys on the field and still have the athleticism that we're looking for. You will see our model at offensive line where we typically recruit the 6 5, 6 6 guys who are 275, 280 pounds who are high school basketball players. We want speed and athleticism at every po- sition. That's kicker, punter, long snap- per, the O-line. A lot of times when you talk about speed, everyone thinks about cornerback and running back. We're talking about speed throughout the program. Aside from the physical attributes, can you talk about the qualities that you look for in recruits? When you were talking about assistant coaches, you emphasized guys with Ivy League backgrounds. What are things you look for when recruiting kids like that? The first thing is, we want winners, guys who are handling their business academically, challenging themselves in coursework. You look for absences and tardies on the transcripts. I think that's a strong indicator of work ethic. We want guys who are going to go to class and handle their business academically, and we want guys who we can talk about and ask people in the community about. It's amazing: You can be sitting in the office and there is a student there and you can ask him about one of the recruits and you're going to find out a lot. You talk to the guidance counselor, the teachers, other students, the custodian staff. My mom was a custodian at Neshaminy High School where I went to school, and those people are the eyes and ears of the schools. You can ask opponent coaches in the area what they think about them. We want to find out as much information as we possibly can. You go do the home visit, you see how they interact with their mom or dad or one of their parents at home or their little brother or sister. It's all those things. And what we're try- ing to do is take all that information and try and figure out who this kid is long- term. I think we've got a good process of doing that. Four of the kids in this class are coming off significant injuries: Daquan Worley, the Allens, Johnathan