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core set of passes that you throw, and then there are some things you mix in there. I think the big thing in this offense is that the quarterback has to be on top of his game mental- ly. He's got to be able to get us in good plays and out of bad ones. He's going to be challenged mentally, be- cause it's a pure pro-style attack and he's got to be able to identify coverages, put us in a good play, be a good decision-maker, be accurate with the football and protect the ball and help us win. Don't do things to put us behind the chains. Keep us ahead of the chains, so to speak. So the first challenge is that they learn it mentally. We want to see a guy continually get better through the spring and into fall camp, and we want to be able to identify that guy. By the time we get to game one, we want to have a guy. Not two or three guys – a guy, who has consistently proven that he can run this offense, make the cor- rect decisions and give us the best opportunity to win. So your preference would not be to platoon those guys? Not right now. Not unless, for some reason, that's the way it worked out. We want to identify a guy who has earned the opportunity to start and then give him the op- portunity to keep that job. And he's got to do that by consistently play- ing every Saturday. If he doesn't, obviously then we would move to another guy. But our preference, as we sit here and speak today, is to try to find one guy. Now, we'll see how that works out. Every practice will tell us a little bit more about each guy. It sounds like it'll be a three- man race. I think so. That's what we believe. You never know, but as we enter spring practice, we feel that McGloin and Bolden and Jones are going to get the bulk of the reps. And they've earned the opportunity to show us: Can they grasp what we're doing? Can they run this offense? You said you haven't watched a lot of film of those guys. Not too much, but Bolden was in our camp down at Vanderbilt, so I'm 26 A P R I L 1 1 , 2 0 1 2 CHARLIE FISHER "We want to see a guy continually get better through the spring and into fall camp, and we want to be able to identify that guy. By the time we get to game one, we want to have a guy. Not two or three guys –a guy, who has consistently proven that he can run this offense." familiar with Rob. I saw Matt on tape at Vanderbilt, because I re- cruited Pennsylvania. I did not see Paul. I know Paul is a physical spec- imen. You look at him and it's not hard to see that he has physical tools. But I've not tried to get too many preconceived ideas about what they can't do. You can get a negative slant if you listen too much. We're trying to look forward, not back. That's my preference. Let's move forward. And they know there are things they have to improve on. That's our job as coaches, to im- prove those. We know we've got to have a more consistent, effective, productive pass game. Penn State has always run the football, but we want to continue to improve our pass game, and they're at the core of that. They've got to make deci- sions and deliver the ball, and we've got to ID the guy who can do that. Penn State finished last in the Big Ten last season in pass effi- ciency. What do you feel this passing game needs to do better? When you look at efficiency, that's a couple of things. No. 1, it's com- pletions. It's completing the pass. That's one of the first steps in effi- ciency. To me, the other big, big stat is touchdowns-to-interceptions. You want to get that at a two-to-one ra- tio. So if I throw 20 touchdowns, I want to have 10 or less intercep- tions, and the lower the better. You want to get your completion per- centage over 60 percent, get your two-to-one touchdown-interception ratio, and the other thing is to cre- ate explosive plays, move the ball down the field. When you play at this level, it's hard to drive the ball 80 or 90 yards every time you go out there. You've got to create some ex- plosive plays. And that's our job as coaches, to develop some schemes that can unload some big plays for these guys. You've already got a verbal com- mitment from a quarterback for next year's class. You're not al- lowed to talk about him, but can you talk in general about what you're going to be looking for in quarterbacks in the future as you go out and recruit? Based on this offense, which is a pro-style offense, and what we're asking the quarterback to do, you want to recruit a smart guy. You want to recruit a football junkie, a guy who loves football and is going to study the game. He's got to study the game and know what he's doing, and he's certainly got to have pro- style skills, so he's got to be able to throw the football. That being said, if we were able to secure a tremendous athlete who's a dual-threat guy and can do both, nobody would ever pass on that guy. We want the best player we can get at the position. But we know for sure that we want to have a guy who can make all the throws, cer- tainly has pro-style size. We'd like a big kid. But at the end of the day, when we get done recruiting, we're going to recruit the best player who fits our scheme. If he deviates from that scheme, then we would have to have a good reason to take him. And those guys are out there. Robert Griffin is a great example. He's a dual-threat guy who really devel- oped as a passer, and look what he accomplished. So we'll find the right guy for us. We will never be in a hurry to recruit a quarterback. We're going to make sure we do a thorough evaluation and find the right guy for us and the right guy for Penn State. What's your recruiting territory going to be? I've got western Pa. – the Beaver Valley, out Route 80 and down into Indiana, that little nook. North Al- legheny, not all of Allegheny Coun- ty, but the north side of Pittsburgh. And then I go over into eastern Ohio, through that middle band there with a heavy concentration in Youngstown, Kent, Akron. There are a lot of good players in eastern Ohio. Penn State has gotten some in the past, so we want to get in there. Penn State football is a tremen- dous brand, so we feel like when we go out there to recruit a young man, we have a great university and a great program to offer up. How eager are you to get out there on the field and start coach- ing this spring? Can't wait. We have put tons of time in in the meeting room learning Coach O'Brien's offense. But again, football is football. A lot of the differ- ences are in the language and how you get to certain things. One thing that we're not going to deviate from is that we're going to be a physical, hard-nosed team that can run the ball. We have a tremendous oppor- tunity using the play-action pass game to make some explosive plays down the field. And we want to be as quarterback-friendly as we can be, give the quarterback the tools to be efficient. You've got to be able to ex- tend the play at this level. There are W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M

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