Blue White Illustrated

T H E 2 0 1 7 S E A S O N do you quantify the value of a Heisman Trophy? Most have been won by players from Power Five schools that were re- cruiting at a high level anyway. Since 2000, Southern California has had three winners (Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush), while three schools have had two apiece: Florida State (Chris Weinke, Jameis Winston), Oklahoma (Jason White, Sam Bradford) and Ala- bama (Mark Ingram, Derrick Henry). As of mid-October, three of those schools were in the Rivals.com top 25 for the Class of 2018, and Alabama (No. 32) will surely be at or near the top when it starts racking up verbal commitments in ad- vance of the early signing period. But when are those schools not in the upper reaches of the Rivals rankings? One could just as easily make the case that their history of competing for na- tional championships or their success at grooming players for the NFL or their willingness to splurge on the best avail- able coaches are more important factors when it comes to recruiting than the size of their trophy cases. That said, the situation at Penn State might be a little different than at those other schools. Coming off the imposi- tion of severe NCAA sanctions, the Nit- tany Lions have been especially eager to show the world that they're ready and able to give elite prospects a platform with which to showcase their talents. A Heisman Trophy would drive that point home in a big way. Given their history, both as a champi- onship-caliber program and as an incu- bator of All-America talent, it's hard to believe that the Lions have had only one Heisman Trophy winner since the award was first bestowed in 1935. Penn State is the eighth-winningest school in the FBS, and all of the seven schools ahead of it have had multiple winners. Notre Dame and Ohio State have won the award seven times each. Oklahoma has five Heisman winners, Nebraska and Michigan three apiece, Alabama and Texas two apiece. Yale, the lone Football Championship Subdivision team with more wins than Penn State, also has more Heisman Trophy winners with two. So yes, if Barkley were to join John Cappelletti on the exceedingly short list of Penn State Heisman winners, it would be a coup not just for him but for the Nittany Lions as a program. It would give Franklin even more credibility as a recruiter than he's already got coming off a Big Ten championship season, and that's something he and his coaches surely want, even if they would rather not talk about it right now. ■ P R E S S C O N F E R E N C E S ing my guy up, let's create a little bit more space. Let's grind, let's strain, let's :nish a little bit more. I think I could say that about the O-line and I could say that about every position. Defensively, we've got to consistently hit our gaps. There are times where we're not getting into the gap we're responsible for, and all of a sudden now they run the ball through that gap and we've got a prob- lem. It's across the board – o;ense and de- fense and special teams. We can sustain a little bit more. [The Indiana game] is a great example. Saquon returns this one for a touchdown. Why? Because we're all on the same page and we all sustain and get him to the next level. He's one- on-one with the kicker; I like our matchup. A few weeks ago, we run a bounce return back to the :eld and we've got one guy who's running the wrong return, and if he's running the right return, we've got everybody blocked and Saquon scores again. It's the little things, it's the details, it's the focus, it's the :nishing. My argu- ment to the whole team is that if the coaches, if the trainers, if the doctors, if the players, if everybody can just get a little bit better, just 1 percent better, then that's going to add up. All those lit- tle percentage points are going to add up, and they are going to hopefully give us a little bit more margin for error. On the o!ensive line, most of these guys played there last year, and it seemed like it was really one of your most improved units as the year went on. Did you think they would be t- ting in better at this point? Is it a mat- ter of adjusting to new positions, because a lot of it's pretty much the same cast? I think the biggest thing is that we have not had consistency at the one po- sition, at the right tackle. We've played three di;erent guys there for a number of di;erent reasons, and the reality is, whether it's all :ve playing really well together or whether it's four guys play- ing well or three guys playing well, you need all :ve. All :ve have to be playing at a high level or people would say, the O- line is not doing as well as they should. I think our O-line is playing good enough to win, but we need to get better. I'd say that about probably all of our po- sitions. You've got Will Fries, who is playing for the :rst time as a redshirt freshman and playing a lot. That's not ideal. There are going to be growing pains from that. But I've been overall pretty pleased with him. I think he's holding his own in big-time football as a 19-year-old. Obviously, being able to get Chasz [Wright] consistently back is going to be important for us, because he played down the stretch last year and played re- ally well, well enough to win the Big Ten Championship Game and go to the Rose Bowl. So getting him back where he's available for an entire game and avail- able at 100 percent would be important. And then [Andrew Nelson], as well. We went into this thinking those guys were going to help create depth for us [but] we've ended up having to use those guys as starters. So you know, it's about probably what I would expect knowing everything that I know. That's about what I would expect. ■

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