Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/703041
BWI How can you best take advantage of your strength in the defensive back- field? FRANKLIN I think by playing with more DBs on the field, since that's a strength. We have three corners who we feel really good about in Christian Campbell, Grant Haley and John Reid obviously. We've got to find that fourth corner who we feel real good about, but we feel like we've got three starters in those guys. Same thing at safety. I think Malik Golden is really coming into his own right now, Marcus Allen is doing some great things, and then there are the guys behind them. Troy Apke has played a lot of football for us. Koa Farmer is an inter- esting guy. Nick Scott is an interesting guy. And then Jarvis Miller and John Petrishen and those guys. That's a posi- tion of strength for us. Then we have to be willing to play a little bit more of an in-your-face style defense. A lot of people, if you don't have confidence in your corners, you play off coverage and keep everything in front. That's been our philosophy for a while, playing quarter-quarter-half, and we want to continue doing that as our base, but we also want to mix in some things where we take some of the short gimme throws away from the offense where they can't just line up and throw a hitch to the field in those soft corners and bleed you to death. We can take some of those things away. BWI What would you do for consistent special teams this year? FRANKLIN One of the things that we did was go out and recruit a punter and a kicker who we feel really good about. It's not a strength or size position, it's truly a skill position, so those guys have a chance to come in and compete. The other thing is, we have everyone back who played last year. So you have a group of guys who do have some ex- perience with two young, exciting guys coming in. And all those guys who red- shirted last year are now available to create more depth on our special teams units, the coverage units and things like that. That's an area we spent a lot of time on this off-season. We need to see a significant improvement. It would really help our defense out, swinging field position, which we were never really able to do, and not only do that but also create some opportunities for big plays. Kickoff return, we're going to have more running backs and more skill peo- ple available. Hopefully we're going to be able to put someone back there who not only can catch the ball but can make something happen. And the same thing with the punt returners. I think Garrity is going to be hard to beat out as the punt returner, but there are guys like Thompkins and others who are going to make it a battle. ■ P R E V I E W FANTASTIC CUISINE EXCEP TIONAL ATMOSPHERE Voted Best Fine Dining V o o t e d B e s t F i n e Dining i n i n g Colleg W ve Av . College & Cato carnegieinnandspa.com | 814.234.2424 Corner of C Corner of Cricklewood Dr. and Toftrees Ave. carnegieinnandspa.com | 814.234.2424 . College & Cato W. 814.861.3463 gigisdining.com RN RN ABLE ABLE TA T ve Av . College & Cato 814.861.3463 gigisdining.com