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them this week. But besides that, there aren't a whole lot of other options. Could you elaborate on the devel- opment of your young wide re- ceivers? You mentioned Irvin Charles, Juwan Johnson and even Saeed Blacknall. They are all three guys who, for whatever reason, haven't done a whole lot yet for you on the field this year. Can you talk about how all three of them are com- ing along? Saeed has been out with an injury. He will be back this week, [and] we're ex- cited about having him back, based on his size and strength. … He's just an older, mature guy. He's also helping us on special teams, because losing all these linebackers and safeties has had a major effect on special teams. Getting another big-body guy like Saeed back will help us on offense in the passing game and also on special teams. Juwan and Irvin are guys who we've been excited about for a couple years now, since they arrived on campus and since we recruited them. They are both kind of starting to come on now. This is really how you would like for the devel- opment to happen. You would love for young guys who are talented to be be- hind veterans and get some reps and get some experience so that when the time comes they are ready. And that's what we've been able to do at wide receiver. So I think that's ideal. And I think you'll see as the year goes on, Juwan and Irv will continue to get more opportuni- ties as they show that they're able to handle it in practice and game situations. Then the other thing is, obviously, if we have any injuries or things like that, you have guys who are developing and preparing for their opportunity when the time comes. So we're excited about those guys, but Saeed is in a different situation. He's an older guy, he's played a lot of football and he just has not been available for injury reasons. You alluded a week or two ago to possibly scripting the first series in order to get a better start. Have you given any more thought to that, and what are the pros and cons of doing it? Again, we have conversations. We spent a lot of time last week on the opening drive, and we'll continue to do that, in openers and how the game starts and some of the adjustments that we're going to make in practice. I make recommendations to our de- fense. I make recommendations to our offense and special teams. You have to be careful when you're in a leadership position that you don't overstep and tell someone specifically how to do their job, unless it gets to the point where you feel like you need to. Joe [Moorhead] has been very successful. We're doing a better job in a lot of different areas of- fensively. We need to continue to grow. One of the areas where we need to be better is opening drives and how we start games. So that's partly my responsibility, partly the assistants' responsibility and the players' as well. We're putting an emphasis on it and [making] changes, and we're going to go from there. It's a little bit different from when you scripted plays in the old system in a pro-style offense. We are [using] so much "check-with-me" [play calling] that a lot of the game is being called on the field based on the looks that we're getting, based on initial alignments and things like that. So you could script the first however many plays, 10 to 15 plays, and that's good. There are things that we want to run early in the game, but again, how the defense aligns is going to affect what we do. Joey Julius revealed the other day that the reason he was away from the program for a while is he's had to deal with his eating disorder. I imagine that's sort of a unique thing for you, and I'm just wondering how you and your staff have helped him work through that. I'm not going to get into a whole lot of specifics, because this is a personal matter for Joey and his family and the people who are supporting him. I'm very, very proud of Joey. I really am, in so many ways. I know this is something that probably affects and helps others, to see athletes or someone in Joey's position make himself vulner- able and put himself out there like that. I think a lot of people can relate with that and I think a lot of people can con- nect with that. But it goes hand-in-hand with our policy. A lot of times, everybody wants to know everything that's going on with these kids, and there are a lot of things going on in their lives that they are dealing with. It's no different than peo- ple all over our country. Joey had some- thing going on, was away from us for a period of time, and I think the best thing that happened is that Joey was able to do that without a lot of people asking questions and wondering where he was at or us talking about it. So we're just here to support Joey and his family in every way we possibly can. O C T O B E R 5 , 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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