Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/724125
urally happen without us emphasizing it. With this offense, do you have any kind of benchmark of how many plays you'd like to run in the game? Would you like to see more stretches of using your fastest tempo when you do have success in early downs? Yeah, the tempo thing really depends. Last week we ended up doing a lot of check-with-me because when it's the first game of the year, you're not com- pletely sure what you're going to get. I would say 75 percent of the looks that we got defensively were different than what we had prepared for. I think that was probably the biggest thing that jumped out during the game and jumped out watching the film. Normal down-and-distance situa- tions, third-down situations, red-zone situations, they played differently than we had prepared for based on the things that we had seen on film. So rather than just running plays, we did a lot of check-with-me, because our initial plays that we had on the game plan did- n't necessarily fit. I think whenever you can speed up the tempo, that's a good thing. We want to be able to do both of those things. We want to be able to check-with-me on the sideline to get in the right play, and we want to have plays where we can get up and just snap the ball. Those are plays that have an opportunity to be successful versus multiple defensive fronts and multiple coverages. So we'll always have some of those plays in the game plan. But, again, based on our first-game scenario, not having any film from this year, it made it a little bit challenging for the first game. Chris Godwin mentioned a-er Sat- urday's game that maybe only 50 or 60 percent of the playbook was actu- ally shown against Kent State. Was that to make it difficult for other teams to scout you going forward? I don't think it would be any differ- ent with any other team where there was no conversation that we're going to hold plays from the playbook back. I think that's how it is every single week. You have the playbook and there is 100 percent of it. That's always kind of a discussion. But I don't think it goes the way people see it or think it goes. So you have 100 percent of the game plan, and you pick the plays that you have in the playbook that fit that spe- cific [opponent]. So it may be 50 per- cent of the playbook, and the next week it may be a different 50 percent based on the team and the style of play it is. It's not like we're holding anything back. It's just, what are the plays that give us the best chance to be successful against Kent State? What are the best plays that give us a chance to be suc- cessful against Pitt? It's not an a ap- proach [that's intended] to hold things back. The spring game, yeah. The spring game is about going out and playing clean and allowing guys to play fast. And you're fairly vanilla, not because you're trying to hold things back, but because you want the game to go smoothly and you want guys to play fast. There is a little bit about holding it back probably for your first game as well. But once the season starts, you're running things that you think give us the best chance to be success- ful. How about the blocking on the le- side of the line against Kent State? How would you assess that in some of your short-yardage situations? Obviously, we gave up one sack and it was a sack-fumble for a touchdown. So it was significant in the game, there's no doubt about it. But obviously it was a major improvement from where we were last year in the opening game. So we've just got to continue to grow there. We did a good job on Saturday of get- ting to third-and-manageable situa- tions, but we didn't pick enough of those up. Our third-down presentation needs to go way up. I thought we did a pretty good job of getting to those man- ageable situations, but we've got to convert. There is no doubt we can play more physical. There is no doubt we can run more physically and decisively. And we had some mistakes as well. The one time we went to pull the ball, there was a little bit of a tug of war between Trace and Saquon and the ball goes to the ground on fourth down. I think we would have picked up the first down there. There was a third down [on which] we didn't communicate effectively up front. We didn't block it the way we needed to block it. That's going to be an area where we'll have to continue to im- prove. S E P T E M B E R 7 , 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 man@g .PSUtixm www.PSUtixman.com at ootba Get yo k c i t t o gm .PSUtixman.com all ur s t s e k