Blue White Illustrated

Nebraska Postgame

Penn State Sports Magazine

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N O V E M B E R 1 8 , 2 0 1 7 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 What has Saquon Barkley meant to your program these last three years? I think you guys have heard us talk about Saquon. Everybody talks about the yards and the touchdowns and the hurdles and all those types of things. But for the people who have been able to get to know Saquon Barkley, he's a better person. He's got a smile on his face every single day. He's a tremendous teammate. He's happier when other guys score than he is for himself. He's been a model citizen off the field. He's killed it in the classroom. He's just been awesome. His mom and dad have been great, he's been great. He's been fantas- tic, so I'm very, very proud of him and his total development since he's arrived on our campus, and that's because of the hard work of a lot of people in our program, but most importantly, that's because of Saquon Barkley wanting to be great in everything that he does. So I'm really proud of him. Blessed to have coached him. Were you a little surprised to be up that many points early on? Did that exceed your expectations for your start? No, I think we've got a good football team and I think we've got a chance to score points and keep people off the field on defense – three-and-outs, turnovers, things like that. I think we've got a good football team. I didn't think we played as clean on special teams today as we have in the past, but I think we've got a pretty good football team. Can you assess Juwan Johnson's day and his season? The exciting thing about Juwan is, I think he's just going to continue to get better. You're really starting to see him play with his size right now. You're talking a wideout who's 6-foot-4, 230 pounds. He can run, and now he's breaking tackles and making one- handed catches. His catch radius is un- believable. He's a guy you can depend on. He's another great teammate. He learned a lot at home. He learned a lot from his brother being an NFL player, as well. I couldn't be more excited about Juwan and his future, and that's in every way possible. We knew he had a great off-season. We were expecting him to have a big year, and I think we're going to go back and go through the cut-ups when the season's over and realize that he probably had a better year than everybody realizes. The exciting part is, I still think there's a lot more leA in the tank for him. I think there are a lot of areas where he can continue to grow.

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