Penn State Sports Magazine
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P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> His production didn't follow suit. Gesicki finished with only 13 catches for 125 yards and a single touchdown, his year marred by the notable receptions he didn't make, even though they were rela- tively few in number. Early in the season against Buffalo, he dropped two surefire touchdown passes on the same posses- sion. A month later, Gesicki again found himself a wide-open target against Indi- ana, only to have the likely touchdown pass slip through his hands. When he suf- fered another drop in the open field in a midseason loss at Ohio State, he was as baffled as he was disappointed. "What's going on?" he asked himself. "Why does this keep happening to me?" A four-star prospect as rated by Rivals.com, Gesicki quickly dismissed one possible answer: that maybe his talent had simply been overrated coming out of high school. He decided instead that he had misunderstood the amount of work nec- essary to reach his elite potential, so he doubled down on the opportunities that were available to him. Or, as he now de- scribes the process, he was able to mature. "I was able to use the experiences that I went through, and I changed the way that I went about my daily work to get where I wanted to go my junior year," Gesicki said. "I went from not staying after practice at all, not coming in at 10 o'clock at night... to just going all out and spending every second of my day thinking about how I'm going to get better and what I'm going to do." Gesicki and the rest of Penn State's of- fense received another boost when Joe Moorhead joined the coaching staff as co- ordinator immediately after the 2015 reg- ular season. Although Moorhead hadn't seen firsthand the difficulties that the tight end had gone though, he did see the results of Gesicki's determination to im- prove, and he knew he wanted to create an environment in which past struggles wouldn't impede future development. Moorhead was confident that Gesicki could be a major asset, and as it turned out, that confidence was not misplaced. Starting each game of the Nittany Lions' 2016 Big Ten championship season, Gesicki exerted a tremendous influence. With 48 receptions for 679 yards and five touchdown catches, he finished second on the team in all three receiving categories. He was tops in receptions among tight ends in the conference, was a second- team All-Big Ten selection and set school records for both single-season catches and receiving yards by a tight end. "It's pretty cool," Moorhead said. "To me, it was very rewarding to see a kid who had gone through a lot and had taken a lot of criticism for his performance to come out and have the type of season he did through how hard he worked. On top of everything he did as a player and his pro- duction, it was great to see him be able to bounce back and start playing at a level that everyone had anticipated with him coming in. Great for the kid." Determined to be an elite tight end for the Nittany Lions, Gesicki doesn't view his story as a comeback. That implies a plot twist, and as far as he's concerned, he's been adhering to the same goals and standards that he brought with him to Penn State three years ago. "People could use that, the underdog story and all that kind of stuff, but I don't really consider myself that," Gesicki said. "The expectations that I've held myself to in terms of individual work ethic and the results that I want to see haven't changed. "I think coming in here, people had high expectations for me and I had high expec- tations for myself. After that season, peo- ple's expectations were lower than the ground and mine were still through the roof because I knew what I was capable of. I just had to go out and do the little things, work on my craft and just get some confidence going back my way. I knew I was going to be fine and would be able to put it all together." ■ 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. at ootba Get yo k c i t t o gm .PSUtixman.com all ur s t s e k MIKE GESICKI YEAR-BY-YEAR YEAR GP/GS REC YDS AVG TD LONG AVG/G 2014 12/1 11 114 10.4 0 30 8.8 2015 12/8 13 125 9.6 1 33 10.4 2016 14/14 48 679 14.1 5 53 48.5 TOTAL 38/23 72 918 12.8 6 53 24.2