Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/541265
You mentioned the same concept at linebacker: losing a great player in Mike Hull but having a broader, better group as a whole. Do you still feel that way going into preseason? Yeah, I do. You do lose Hull, who is a huge loss, but the fact that you have Ben Kline back now gives you the older presence, the leadership, the intangi- bles. We haven't had a chance to see him healthy yet. He did some things this spring, but he's still not 100 percent. I think he will be this fall. You've got Ny- eem Wartman, who played at a high lev- el last year who has a chance to take it to a whole other level. You've got Brandon Bell, who played at a high level. I think them playing with Mike Hull, they learned a lot. So you have those two guys who played significant reps and were starters. You have Gary Wooten, who has really played a decent amount the last three years. You have Jason Cabinda, who played a lot as a freshman and played at a pretty high level. You have Von Walker, who played more of a prominent role on special teams but did play and I think did start one game. You have Troy Reed- er, who is a guy who could have started last year, another one of those guys on the scout team who everyone's real ex- cited about. And then Koa Farmer is kind of the young, exciting guy, and there's a lot of enthusiasm about him. But he's still really learning. He's never even played the position before. And then you've got the influx of [freshmen]: Jake Cooper, Manny Bowen, Daiquan Kelly. So I think that's exactly right. You lose one prominent player, but as a group we're better. Now the difference is that one prominent guy made everyone bet- ter around him. And that's where you're not going to get that, so each one of those guys has got to be able to bring more to the game to make up for the loss of Mike Hull. Can your secondary become more of an asset this year? Yeah, because the funny thing is, al- though we're more talented, we didn't capitalize [last season]. Although we had some turnovers, if you look at turnovers in our secondary, we didn't have enough. And as good as our de- fense plays, if we can get more turnovers, that's not only going to help our defense by getting them off the field and dropping the play count of the [op- posing] offense, but it's also going to create opportunities for our defense to score or to put our offense in better field position. We talk about the perfect storm. The punting was a factor. The punting hurt our defense. It put them in a tough spot, which put our offense in a poor spot. So they always had a long field. The perfect storm continues, but to me, playing at defensive back is about calculated risk. Are you willing to take the calculated risk to make the big play? I think there were times when we could have done that and didn't in the past. The great ones – the great second- aries and the great secondary players – they do that. And they probably say they do some things they shouldn't do, but they're able to get away with it. You look at Trevor Williams – he's go- ing to have the ability to do that. You look at Grant Haley, I think he's going to have the ability to do that. I think Chris- tian Campbell, there's a buzz about him right now. Then you've got Daquan Worley, who was redshirted last year who we're excited about. Then, obvi- ously, John Reid and Garrett Taylor are coming in. ■ P R E V I E W