Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/578836
C OA C H S P E A K| EXCERPTS FROM JAMES FRANKLIN'S WEEKLY PRESSER
Akeel Lynch, Mark Allen and Evan
Schwan suffered injuries Saturday.
Are any of them season-ending? And
if I could follow that up, if you're
going to be without Lynch and
Saquon Barkley for a while, what is
your confidence level in Mark Allen
and Nick Scott?
Part of this is challenging because we
send out the depth chart to you guys
and you get it, and then we have this
press conference on Tuesdays and it's
hard to tell. I don't talk about injuries a
whole lot. To be honest with you, this
early in the week, even if I wanted to,
there is not a whole lot I could tell you.
We didn't know about Jordan Lucas last
week until basically Saturday morning.
From everything I know this morning,
none of them are season-ending in-
juries. I anticipate getting them all back,
whether it's this week or next week,
we'll see. We'll see how the week goes,
how they heal.
I know they're committed and I've
been down in the training room every
morning around 7 o'clock and walking
around and checking on those guys
and seeing how they're doing, [get-
ting] the feedback from our medical
staff. So this is why the development
of the guys in your program and re-
cruiting is so important, so you have
the depth to be able to handle some of
these issues.
A@er losing two guys [at running
back] who were playing at a pretty high
level, it was exciting to see Mark Allen
come in and touch the ball and score a
touchdown in his first touch and a
pretty exciting play, and Nick Scott got
some opportunities. Obviously, they
were behind those other two guys on
the depth chart for a reason, but that
also doesn't mean that we don't have
tremendous faith and belief in them and
think that they're going to have an op-
portunity to do good things for us. So
we'll see how the week goes. We'll see
who is available for the game on Satur-
day.
But it's next man up, and those guys
have an opportunity and I know they're
excited about it.
Could you describe the running
styles of Nick Scott and Mark Allen?
And the fact that you went right to
Mark with the swing pass a