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guys coming in. He needed time to get bigger and stronger in the weight room, but we were close to burning his red- shirt. That was a big discussion for us in the season last year, whether we were going to burn his shirt. We ended up being able to save his shirt, and now he's got four years to have a big role for us. So there's a lot of excitement about him, his athleticism, his intelligence, his approach. Coming from a winning high school program, he understands what it takes to be successful, sacrifices that need to be made. There's a lot of excitement about him and his future. I noticed that Noah Beh isn't listed on the depth chart. How did he progress during camp, and are you comfortable with the depth behind Brendan Mahon at le: tackle with Paris Palmer and those guys? I think you always want as much depth as you possibly can, and we don't really look at it as just leB tackle. It's the tackles in general, the tackle position. The leB tackles and the right tackles are all fighting for who is the third-best tackle, who is the fourth-best tackle, and so on and so forth. And Noah has been a part of that con- versation during all of camp. Noah has really shown some nice things and made some dramatic improvement from last season, but there are still some areas that he needs to work on. Those areas have been communicated clearly to Noah, and he's a guy who we still feel has a bright future here at Penn State. But there are just some areas that he needs to continue to invest in to help him have the type of role that he wants for us on our offensive line. You've spoken a lot about Kevin Givens over the past few months. Are there a couple of things that he did during camp to take that next step to solidify the top spot at the three- technique position? I think whenever you take a corner and move him to safety or a safety and move him to linebacker, or linebacker and move him to D-end and so forth and so on, what you're trying to do is take a guy who has good athleticism and move him to a position where now maybe he has really good athleticism or elite ath- leticism for that position. What you don't know sometimes is, will it translate? Just like with Kevin, Kevin did some remarkable things in the weight room. He's one of those guys, whenever we're testing and it's power clean or squat, everybody kind of gravi- tates over to watch him, because he's going to do something remarkable from that perspective. But once again, not all the time does that translate onto the field. I played with a bunch of guys, I've been around them my entire career, who were weight room warriors, but it didn't always translate onto the football field. And the opposite: I've been around guys who have been weak in the weight room and have been functionally strong in the games or in practice. Kevin is a guy who, really, it's showed up at both. His work ethic and commit- ment in the weight room have really translated on the field, and his quickness and athleticism at the defensive tackle position have been a problem for guys. And typically, you don't have both. Typ- ically you have undersized guys who have tremendous quickness, but they can get overpowered at times. Kevin is pound-for-pound probably one of the strongest guys on our team, and on top of that, he's got tremendous quickness and athleticism for that position. Sometimes length is a factor at those defensive line positions, as well, when you're going against offensive linemen with really long arms. But Kevin, his hand placement is excellent, and he's able to really get leverage from his height and also from his hand place- ment. And you combine that with his quickness, his athleticism and his strength, and he's been a problem. So we're excited about his future and what he brings and what he's going to be able to do opening the season against Kent State. Looking at Kent State on defense, they are projected to be one of the better units in the MAC this year. What kind of problems do they pres- ent for you, and how do you expect them to defend Saquon Barkley? If I'm going into this game and I'm Kent State, my defense is going to be designed to take Saquon Barkley out of the game and make a new quarterback beat you. So we've spent a lot of time going over the defenses that we've seen on film. I think that's one of the areas where you have to be careful as coaches: you start chasing ghosts. So you take what they have shown on film and you design a scheme to attack the things that you see on film, and the defenses of the different looks that they give that you think you're most likely to see in certain formations and certain down and distances. A U G U S T   3 1 ,   2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 13 PSUtixman@gmail.com www.PSUtixman.com Get your PSU Football Tickets at go t ti cke t s? k c i t t t e k PSUtixman@gmail.com .PSUtixman.com www www.PSUtixman.com at PSU Football T Get your k c i t t o PSUtixman@gmail.com .PSUtixman.com PSU Football T Get your s t s e k

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