Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/703041
about with the quarterbacks, they're go- ing to play. BWI Is it fair for anybody to expect the incoming guys to push or compete? FRANKLIN Not on the offensive line. If it happens, it's an anomaly, it's a rarity and it's someone who is the exception. Michal Menet – there's a buzz and an excitement about him. But again, there just aren't many times when a freshman could come in and play on the offensive line. The other guy, who I think people probably don't talk about a lot, is Will Fries. Every time I see that guy, he's kind of the prototype of what you're looking for. He's 6-foot-6, really long arms, right around 290-295. He's the model. He plays with a nastiness and a tough- ness on film, which you don't really find very often. Menet is just a freak athleti- cally who is able to do so many things well. BWI On defense, Brent Pry loses some pieces on the line, and there are pros and cons to the introduction of Joe Moor- head's system and how it affects the de- fense. How do you evaluate that side of the ball? FRANKLIN I think you have two things. They are going to be challenged in practice against a scheme that we're going to see most weeks of the year. In the old days, if you were running this style of offense, you would be the excep- tion in the Big Ten, where now it's more of the norm. So that will prepare us for more weeks during the season. What Brent has to do a great job of is, every day in his defensive drills and de- fensive team periods, he needs to work in pro-style, power offense. He needs to work in that aspect of things that they're not going to see with our offense. One of the advantages with the old offense is, you saw aspects of spread, you saw as- pects of power, you saw aspects of tradi- tional two-back, you saw aspects of no backs. You saw it all, which I think for a defense, that was kind of always our philosophy: We may not be great in any one area, but we're going to play great complementary football. That's one of the things now, although I think this is going to get us prepared for more of what we're going to see throughout the year. Brent will have to do a good job of scouting himself to provide some of those aspects. When we got here, it was pretty obvi- ous who the recruiting coordinator was, because that position by far had more depth and talent than any other position on the team. So Bob Shoop walks in with that being the strength of the defense. Although we made some moves like An- thony Zettel [to defensive tackle], that was a strength. Now we're kind of on the opposite end of it. … The good thing, though, is that the guys who are fighting for starting jobs now, it's not like they didn't play at all. Parker Cothren has played a lot of football for us. Torrence Brown has played a lot of football for us. [Evan] Schwan has played a lot of foot- ball for us. [Garrett] Sickels has played a lot of football for us. Antoine White has played a little bit of football. So it's not like we're [relying on] guys who haven't played and now need to step up. D-tack- le is the area where we just don't have as much experience. BWI You have six defensive linemen who have played versus 12 who haven't. FRANKLIN I think that number is probably similar to what most people have. That's probably somewhat normal, except that those six have more signifi- cant starts and more significant action at some other places. We're still a little young. But I think it does present some op- portunities and some excitement for young guys. Who would have thought Kevin Givens would have had the spring that he had? Obviously there was a lot of excitement about him, and he's a guy who has really done some nice things. He still needs to get bigger, but he really did some nice things for us. Antoine White has got a tremendous opportuni- ty. Brennon Thrift has got a tremendous opportunity. Hopefully things work out with Tyrell Chavis, who has a tremen- dous opportunity and off of film shows some really good things. I think Robert Windsor is a guy who has a tremendous opportunity. There are some real posi- tives there and excitement for guys to step up. I think as coaches and as media members and as fans, it's a lot easier and it makes everybody feel better when you've got a guy who's a proven com- modity. We don't have a lot of that right now. BWI How do you assess your situation at linebacker? FRANKLIN If you watch the Temple game from last year, before Nyeem [Wartman-White] got hurt, we were playing pretty good on defense. That significantly changed. So [this season] you have a chance to have Nyeem, Jason Cabinda and Brandon Bell who have all played a lot of football here and have all been successful, backed up by Jake Cooper and Manny Bowen, who have gotten some nice reps and are how you would like it to be with the number two guys. Then [the goal is] to identify some other guys, whether it's moving some guys from safety, moving some guys from corner, or whether it's depending on a freshman to be your number five or six linebacker. Cam Brown for example. That's one of the discussions we're hav- ing right now. There are some interest- ing guys at safety, because I think that's another position where we're fairly deep. And to leave all these guys at safe- ty when they could have more signifi- cant roles at linebacker, not only for this year but in the future, I don't know if that makes a whole lot of sense. You'll probably see some of that move- ment between now and the first two weeks of camp. You'll see some guys who we're going to move. It may be some cor- ners to outside linebackers. With the style of offenses that people are running, a lot of people are playing full-time nick- els. They're going 4-2-5. So I know there's some concern about depth at linebacker, and we realize that as well, but when you think about it, when you're trying to create depth with three line- backers on the field when in reality you can probably do it with two linebackers, you have some answers there. 2 0 1 6 P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L