Blue White Illustrated

O c T O B E R 2 9 , 2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . c O M 7 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 P O S T G A M E P R E S S E R On Penn State's first drive: We went down the first drive and did really well and then we stalled out a little while. On Saquon Barkley: I think he's the type of player that we would all admit has the chance to break one every play. That's why he's exciting. That's why he's one of the better running backs in all of college football. I will tell you this: Before that drive started. Joe [Moorhead] goes, "Coach, a?er this 81-yard touchdown, do you want to go for two or kick the extra point. Everyone kind of looked at him like he was crazy, and then there goes Saquon jumping over three people and scoring a touchdown. ... [Derek] Dowrey comes back to the sideline and says, "Do you believe that?" On getting younger players into the game in the fourth quarter: We haven't really had the opportunity to do that a whole lot since we've been here. To have that type of game where you're able to get some of those guys experi- ence, especially when we were at 65 scholarships or 75 scholarships, it's a lot of wear and tear on those guys. To have a game like this where you're able to get some guys in – it's hard. Be- cause you see the clock has 14 minutes in le? in the game. You're sitting there [thinking that] a lot of things can hap- pen in 14 minutes, so when is the right time to put these guys in? It's always a?er the fact you never put them in fast enough or you get in situations where you put them in too early. So it was great to get guys like Tommy [Stevens], all the running backs, the receivers, I think [Ryan] Monk got in there and got some work, a bunch of linebackers, [Jake] Cooper at middle linebacker. Even Ayron Monroe and Jarvis [Miller] got work at safety, so that's really valu- able. On Brendan Mahon's performance opening up holes for Barkley: He's doing a really nice job. We're pleased with him. He's kind of the model. He's got the length to play tackle, he's got the physicality to play guard. He creates a lot of flexibility and he's taken that position and really run with it. Early in the season he had some growing pains and he's learned from them. I'm really proud of him. On the importance of getting a road win: We didn't talk about it. It's impor- tant to win each week, whether you're at home or on the road. This was the most important game on our schedule because it was the next game on our schedule. We'll start breaking down the film on the plane ride home and try to enjoy it for a couple of hours and then get up to- morrow morning and get to work on the next opponent.

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