Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/541265
Breneman has got some experience, and Brent Wilkerson provides some depth. We've got some guys there, so hopefully we'll be able to do some interesting things with them. Do you think pressure was a factor in last year's performances? I don't know. I don't think that, and I didn't get the sense of that. If you pre- pare and you believe in yourself and your ability, you should thrive in any situa- tion that some might assume is pres- sure, because you know you've worked hard and believe in yourself to make the play in that spot. But it's a little bit different when they haven't had the life experience yet to know that, isn't it? Maybe. You see other people do it be- fore without it, but I think it definitely helps. Hopefully, with the experience we [gained] last year from guys playing and now having an off-season, we should be able to execute pretty well. Is the offensive line the key to the offense's success this season? If you're an offensive lineman, you take pride in starting up front. So I think those guys understand that, and that's what we tell them all the time. We had some guys last year who played well at times and played inconsistently at times, and if we can play as good as we're able to play, then I think they will be a pretty darn good unit. In your mind, are there any other important factors that will impact the offense's production this season? I feel pretty good right now. Your job each year is to go into a season as pre- pared as possible, and I [am pleased with] the way our guys have worked this off-season and the way our staff has re- ally put the time in to self-evaluate and study opponents and come up with things that we might not have been able to get to last year. The time that's been put in to get better this year – I feel good about it showing up in the fall. ■ P R E V I E W KEY PERSONNEL Christian Hack- enberg*, Trace McSorley, Tommy Stevens LOSSES D.J. Crook, Michael O'Connor RISING STAR McSorley got first- and second-team practice reps last season. That experience probably gives him a leg up on Stevens, a true freshman who enrolled at Penn State in January. McSorley didn't play in the Blue-White Game for unspecified reasons, so he's yet to make his public debut, but James Franklin said he "really had a strong spring." BIGGEST LOSS O'Connor was a four-star prospect before leaving Penn State in December and eventu- ally transferring to the University of British Columbia. One of the higher profile prospects in the Class of 2014, he only made one public appearance with the Nittany Lions: last year's Blue-White Game, in which he com- pleted 11 of 16 passes for 81 yards. NUMBERS GAME For a variety of reasons, Penn State had difficulty getting the ball downfield last season, and the lack of a vertical passing game was reflected in Hackenberg's average of 11 yards per completion. Of the Big Ten's top 10 quarterbacks, only two finished with lower aver- ages: Michigan's Devin Gardner (10.9) and Northwestern's Trevor Siemian (9.7). Hackenberg averaged 12.8 yards per completion as a fresh- man, but of course, he had Allen Robinson as a target in 2013. OUTLOOK For the past two years, this position has been a paradox: im- pressively stable but also strangely volatile. Hackenberg has started 25 consecutive games, maintaining an iron grip on the first-team spot de- spite being a true freshman in 2013 and absorbing a nightmarish 44 sacks last year. Behind him, however, the depth chart has been in a constant state of upheaval. The Lions have lost four backup quarterbacks since the end of the 2013 season. In addition to O'Connor and Crook, they have bid farewell to walk-on Austin Whipple and juco transfer Tyler Ferguson. It's entirely possible that this trend will catch up to Penn State at some point, but then again, it might not. One of Hackenberg's most underrat- ed attributes is his resilience. No Big Ten quarterback absorbed more physical punishment than he did last year. Penn State surrendered seven more sacks than the teams that tied for 13th place in most sacks allowed (Illinois and Maryland), yet the soph- omore kept coming back for more. With any luck, he won't be under quite so much duress in 2015. – M.H. >> QUARTERBACK NO NAME YR HT WT 14 C. Hackenberg Jr. 6-4 228 9 Trace McSorley R-Fr. 6-0 195 4 Tommy Stevens Fr. 6-4 197 PHIL GROSZ'S TAKE Penn State is 100 percent secure at the starting quarterback position with Hackenberg. The big unknown here is whether McSorley is ready to become the backup coming off a redshirt season. If he's able to lock down the second-team spot and Hackenberg stays healthy, Penn State will have its best situation at quarterback since the NCAA sanc- tions went into effect in July 2012. * Starting experience in 2014