Blue White Illustrated

SPRING FOOTBALL WRAP | PENN STATE VS. HOUSTON Standout LB Gerald Hodges looks ahead to a season filled with promise FOR MORE BACK MATT HERB |M A T T@B L U EWH I T E O N L I N E . C O M H ad he wanted, the biggest event on Gerald Hodges' calendar this April would have been the NFL Draft, not the Blue-White Game. After the 2011 regular season, the then-junior linebacker requested an evaluation from the league's Draft Advisory Board. In December, a rep- resentative of the board called the fam- ily home in Paulsboro, N.J., to give Hodges the results. But he was already in Dallas preparing for Penn State's ap- pearance in the TicketCity Bowl. His father took the call, but didn't pass the message along. It didn't matter what the scouts thought about his son's po- tential, Gerald Hodges Sr. decided. "He said, 'We're not going to go off of anybody else. You're either going to go or you're not. Either you feel like you can play or you feel like you can't,' " the younger Hodges said. "So I prayed and made my decision off of that." That decision was to stay at Penn State for one more year. To this day, Hodges doesn't know what his father learned about his draft-worthiness. "I'm real curious," he said, "But he won't budge. He won't tell me. He said, 'Just go out there and play.' " That's just what Hodges is doing. In- stead of prepping for the draft, he's get- ting ready for his final season at Penn 24 J U N E 1 , 2 0 1 2 State. It should be a good one. Maybe a great one. Hodges said he has been practicing at the Sam position as he gets accli- mated to Ted Roof's new defense. Roof had a lot of concerns to address in his first spring at Penn State, but the Sam position wasn't one of them. Roof studied Hodges' bio after taking over as defensive coordinator in Jan- uary. He describes the 6-foot-2, 233- pound linebacker as "a guy who's hun- gry to get better. Spends a lot of time on attention to detail, wants to contin- ue to learn and grow into the position. He was a high school quarterback and free safety and started out as a safe- ty here. So he's still young in the po- sition, but I've been pleased with his effort and his attitude this spring." Hodges will have a lot of pass cover- age responsibilities, but he didn't in- dicate that the defense will be any more complex, nor did fellow line- backer Michael Mauti. Said Mauti, "I see the offense's playbook, and that's like a different language. I don't even want to look at it. The defense is a lit- tle bit more simple. Once you learn the concepts, you can call anything you want as long as you know where guys fit in the puzzle. That's our only learning curve." SPRING AWAKENING Hodges heads into Beaver Stadium prior to the Blue-White Game. The senior linebacker played sparingly in the game, finishing with one tackle. Coming off a season in which he led the Nittany Lions with 106 tackles, Hodges said he isn't focused on stats or awards heading into his final sea- son. "I haven't really set any goals," he said. "My main goal is just to come out here every day and what I didn't do so well last year, come out here and put Logan Cramer III an emphasis on that and do it better. Just try to get better on a consistent basis and improve my game. Just be the best I can be, basically." Hodges' game was at a pretty high level last year – he was named a first-team All-Big Ten linebacker by the league's coaches – and he continued W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M

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