Blue White Illustrated

C ontinuity used to be Penn State's thing. From 1918 to 2011, the university had only 5ve head football coaches, four of whom lasted for more than a decade each. Joe Paterno was the last of those 5ve, and he was in charge for nearly half a century. His assistants tended to stay for years, too, lending the Nittany Lions an aura of stability that other programs could only dream of. Of course, stability isn't always an un- equivocal asset. It can turn into calci5- cation when taken to an extreme, and by the end of the 5rst decade of the 21st century, the Nittany Lions had taken it to an extreme. But it sure beats the al- ternative, and Penn State has discovered that, too, in recent years. Since November 2011, the Lions have had as many head coaches – 5ve if you count interim coaches Tom Bradley and Larry Johnson – as they did in the previ- ous 93 years. While there are a lot of rea- sons why the team's winning percentage declined from 74.6 during the Paterno era to 62.2 over the past three seasons, the NCAA's brutal sanctions being chief among them, the coaching sta6's con- tinual churn contributed to the di7cul- ties. Even when the sta6 wasn't coming apart, it was threatening to come apart, as was the case in January 2013, when Bill O'Brien had to call a news confer- ence to announce that he wasn't leaving for the NFL. (He ended up leaving 11 months later.) But as Penn State gets set to begin spring practice in anticipation of the 2015 season – the team will open its off-season drills on March 20 – it is starting to once again develop a bit of continuity. For the first time since 2011, it'll have the same defensive coordina- tor it had the year before. In fact, it'll have the same entire coaching staff it had the year before, with all nine of James Franklin's assistants returning to oversee the same position groups they oversaw in 2014. That's hardly an un- precedented occurrence in college football, but the way things have been going at Penn State lately, it feels like a luxury. There will be a lot of familiar faces in the starting lineup, as well. A8er 5elding the second-youngest team in the Foot- ball Bowl Subdivision last fall, the Nit- tany Lions return 15 starters and 14 other players with starting experience. That, too, is going to work to their advantage this spring and in the coming fall. A year ago, spring practice was an eye- opener, with Franklin and his sta6 get- ting their 5rst up-close look at the team they had inherited. They got to see, for example, just how thin Penn State was on the o6ensive line – a situation that went from bad to worse when starting guard Miles Die6enbach went down with a knee injury that would force him to miss most of the 2014 season. But even though the 2015 Nittany Li- ons have a familiar look to them, they face a number of pressing questions heading into spring practice. What fol- lows are 5ve of the most urgent ques- tions, along with some educated guesses as to how they will be resolved. 1 Can Bob Shoop build a de- fense that's as e'ective as last year's? Shoop set the bar awfully high in his 5rst season, didn't he? The Nittany Li- ons 5nished third in the country against the run, allowing just over 100 yards per game. They 5nished second in pass-e7- S P R I N G P R A C T I C E P R E V I E W FIVE QUESTIONS | BWI ponders the Lions' most vexing unknowns

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