Blue White Illustrated

Regarding Saquon Barkley, how did the reality of the season match your expectations from last winter, and where do you think he can get better? I think Saquon is just scratching the surface to be honest with you. He's still figuring things out. He's still growing. You think about that guy with a whole off-season of strength and conditioning and speed work, of continuing to study defenses and understand coverages and fronts. Yeah, he's just at the very begin- ning of it. Although he's physically de- veloped, he's just going to get bigger and stronger and faster and more explo- sive and more confident. And the more confident you get mentally, the faster you're able to play. I knew that he was a good player. When we got the job, he was committed to another institution, and we knew he was a good player and wanted to get him on our squad. And then he went out and had an outstanding senior year, which I thought was special. I thought he had a really, really special senior year. And that's when I thought, yeah, this guy may have a chance to help us as a fresh- man. And once he arrived, his de- meanor and his approach and his attitude [indicated that he] was going to do everything in his power to play as a freshman, and not just play, but have an impact. And then I think pretty early in prac- tice, it was clear he was going to need to have a role. How he grew and matured [was going to] determine how big that role was going to be for us. That stretch from Ohio State to Northwestern, he had 20 or more carries per game a>er missing two games earlier in the year. Then he had I think 32 combined carries in the last two games. How do you think he held up down the stretch and how will this time off benefit him and that position group specifically? I think the time off will help him be- cause from the time he went down, he wasn't really healthy aDer that. At some point, our medical staff was comfort- able with him being able to come back, but he wasn't 100 percent. I think with the time they've had off, most of our guys are close to being back to 100 percent now. As you guys know, we're still relatively thin. So having the depth is important for us. What was it like to see Carl Nassib night a>er night a>er night in con- tention for national awards, and what has it meant to him and the program? It was really cool. Carl is graduating with a biology degree. What we tried to do, just between recruiting and other re- sponsibilities, practice and things like that, was to kind of split it up. Kris [Pe- tersen, Penn State football SID] pretty much went to everything. And then I was going to make the ones that I could make, and then we had some other plans, as well, just to make sure there was some- body with Carl at all these different events, and then his family was able to make it to some. Some of these events don't pay for the families to go, others do, so it makes it difficult for some guys to get their family members there. It was great spending time with Carl. When you've got 125 guys on the team, you don't get to spend enough time, in- dividual time, with each one of them. But as we all know, he's an interesting guy. He really is. I have a lot of respect for Carl and all the things that he's been able to accom- plish, and one of the things that I love the most about him is that Carl is one of these guys who is very, very comfort- able in his own skin and with who he is: the type of student he is, the type of person he is, the type of player he is, how passionate he is, how motivated he is, how much he cares about Penn State and his teammates. He's a guy who really took this whole Penn State experience and ran with it. I'm really proud of him. It was also cool to watch him kind of interact with all those other players at the different na- tional awards. We got a chance to intro- duce him to a lot of people. He tweeted out a picture of him and Coach [Barry] Switzer. Me and Coach Switzer have gotten to know each other fairly well the last couple of years, so I got a chance to introduce him to him, and he enjoyed that. All the other players; we sat right behind [Stanford's Christian] McCaf- frey and his mom and dad at the ESPN Awards, so it was good getting a chance to spend some time with them. I think Carl kind of had an "a-ha" mo- ment. I think it's one thing to know that you're leading the country in sacks and tackles for loss and all those types of things and you think you're a pretty good player. But now you're going to all these national awards with all these players you hear about on TV and you see and you're one of them. He kind of had an a-ha moment and said, "Maybe I am pretty good." It was really good. I think Kris enjoyed it. I know I enjoyed it. It was taxing. Obviously that trip that Kris and Carl had to take out to California for the Lott IMPACT Trophy, it's a long trip but well worth it, especially when Carl looked at all the people who had won that award before him. It's pretty exciting. I am re- ally proud. We've done some new things in our lobby promoting some of our award win- ners, so all the undefeated seasons [are represented] in our lobby now and all the national award winners and academic award winners. To think Carl is now going to have three national award things up there in our lobby is amazing when you think about where Carl started. I think it's one of the better stories in col- lege football in my 21 years of doing this. Joe Moorhead has gotten rave re- views as a recruiter. What's his re- cruiting territory going to be, and how do you see him working with your staff? We haven't really identified that. Ob- viously you want to play to guys' strengths, and also for the coordinators, you'd like to have a smaller area and a little bit more of a regional area, just be- cause of their other responsibilities. At this point in the recruiting process, we are more concerned about finishing off this class, so his responsibility right now is to build relationships with our current commits and guys who we're still involved with, and he's already started doing some evaluation of the 2017 guys who we're involved with. One of the challenges is that [Moor- head] and Bob [Shoop] have a similar background and they are both coordi- nators, so it's hard for them both recruit the same areas. D E C E M B E R 3 0 , 2 0 1 5 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 15

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