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C O A C H S P E A K • E X C E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S W E E K L Y P R E S S E R A2er a big win like last week's, how much confidence do you have that the players can put the Ohio State game behind them and focus com- pletely on Purdue? Well, I think when you have a young team like we do, that's a challenge, but I thought our coaches did a great job with that on Sunday. I sat in both the offen- sive team meeting and defensive team meeting, our unit meetings, whatever you want to call it. I thought Coach [Joe] Moorhead reinforced the things I had already said in the team meeting. I thought Coach [Charles] Huff did that with special teams. And I thought Coach [Brent] Pry did a great job with that in their unit meetings. Then Sun- day we go out and make the corrections from the game. Before we're halfway through practice, we switch to Purdue and we were able to do that. And then our conversation was that we're not talking about Ohio State any- more, except for the guys who have to go to the Quarterback Club luncheon and the guys who have to go to the press conference. Besides that, we're going to move forward and move on and learn from it and grow from it. I think one of the things that helps us is that we don't change our approach, ever. So I think since we didn't change our approach on the front end, we don't need to change our approach on the back end, and you know, it's business as usual for us. It was a great game. It was a great environment and it was great to see our players go out and play well and it was great to see the fans enjoy it so much, and our alumni and lettermen and all those things. But again, it's on to the next game. I wanted to get your thoughts on the development of Trace McSorley in your running game. It seems like since the start of the season, he's got- ten faster at a lot of different things: the speed of his decision-making, the deception with his ball handling and just the way that he and Saquon Barkley work together, especially the past few games. Your thoughts on how he's improved maybe in that facet. Yeah, I think I mentioned to you guys a couple of weeks ago that we needed to get him more involved in the run game, whether it's designed quarterback runs or on some of those quarterback reads, the gray reads that we were pretty much giving all the time to Saquon, and we're pulling some of those now. So I think that's been helpful for us. But yeah, I think obviously he's a first- time starting quarterback. With each game and each rep, he continues to gain confidence. I've been pleased with him, but he's been pretty much Steady Eddie. He hasn't changed. His approach has been really good. His practice habits have been really good. His questions have been really good. His leadership has been really good. So I've been pleased with him, and he's Steady Eddie. You know, one of the things that I think has been pretty cool is that mom gets snacks for the O-line each week. Our snacks Friday night be- fore the hotel, when we're on the road, she finds some local establishment that is a bakery or something in town, and she brings something different each week for those guys and there's always a little note in there. But it's just little things like that that I kind of see hap- pening on our team. Appreciation is something that we talk about a lot in our program. I think appreciation is very, very important on a team, and it's very important in indi- viduals, being appreciative of what we have here at Penn State, being apprecia- tive of all the blessings that we have in our life, and I just see that. I see exam- ples of that with our team. I see the running backs appreciating our O-line, and the quarterbacks appreciating our O-line and guys appreciating the role of special teams and guys like Von Walker and the impact they have and the de- fense and the coaches. There's a real good vibe with those things right now, and I think those things are really, really important in a program. You talked a lot about the job Brent Pry has done this year. What stands out most to you about his coaching, and how have you seen him grow as a coach over the years that you've known him? I think it's perseverance – the way he's handled situations, the way we handled losing all those defensive line- men, and knowing that we had a bunch of inexperienced guys who were going to have to fill in in that role, and how he handled it, how he persevered and han- dled the linebacker situations and los- ing a lot of guys. I've been a lot of places where that happens and there is a "woe is me" by the coach, and if you do that, the players take on that iden- tity. He hasn't been like that. It's been "next man up, what a great opportunity we have to go out and do something re- ally special." He is really positive, yet very demanding, which I think is a re- ally important trait in a coach. He can be really demanding on people but still be positive and do it in a constructive way. So he's very respected. I've known him for a long time, as I think you guys know. I think his first year coaching was my last year playing. I've known him for a long time and kind of followed his ca- reer, watched his career. We've always stayed in touch. And then obviously we've been together for the last, I guess this would be year six, and you guys know how I talked about him before this season. I had a lot of faith, had a lot of belief in him, and I'm proud. I think Tim Banks has kind of taken on the role that [Pry] had last year and has done a nice job with that. He's been a really good sounding board, [brought a] different perspective on some things, and you know, Terry [Smith] had never really coached on the defensive side of the ball before coming here… and he's doing a tremendous job with the cor- ners, and obviously Sean Spencer has really done a nice job. Last year we led the nation in sacks with our defensive line and obviously Carl [Nassib], and we're getting production out of these guys now. So he continues to do a great job, not only with production in terms O C T O B E R 2 6 , 2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 12

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