Blue White Illustrated

P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> "I think I develop tremendous confi- dence in the majority of my guys [that they can go] into our game at any point in time," Spencer said. "I get a feel for the game. We chart the reps on the sideline, so it's really strategic and calculated how many reps I want a guy to take. We plan it out on Saturday morning – myself, Coach Franklin and Coach Pry – and we just talk about how much we want to see of a guy. "If I can play more guys, honestly, in games where we're ahead and I can get guys valuable reps, I'll certainly play my younger guys to make sure they get more reps, because there's nothing like game experience. In certain games I'm not going to play as many guys based on the opponent, so you just have to be careful. If I were to give you an answer in a given game, I'm going to play between eight and nine guys." The key to Penn State's approach is to have as many game-ready players as pos- sible available at any given moment. And that gets back to recruiting. Spencer may want prospects who mesh with the per- sonalities in the locker room, but when it comes to players' skill sets, he wants va- riety. Having a wide array of skills at his disposal helps him with what he calls the "chess match" against opposing offen- sive coordinators. He wants the ability to insert different defensive linemen into a given game situation based on down and distance or to exploit matchup advan- tages. "I don't want to have clones," Spencer said. There are plenty of examples of this ap- proach on the roster. A quick glance at the defensive line shows almost no overlap between heights and weights. And in the one instance in which two players share the same build – redshirt freshman ends Daniel Joseph and Shane Simmons are both listed at 6-foot-3, 250 pounds – their styles are very different. G etting the Wild Dogs ready to howl isn't Sean Spencer's only duty as Penn State's defensive line coach. The veteran assistant, now in his fourth season with the Nittany Lions, also has a hand in the team's recruiting e;orts on both sides of the ball. He was one of the coaches who helped bring Saquon Barkley to University Park, and he recently touched on that subject and more in a conference call with Penn State beat writers. ON SHAREEF MILLER I'm not just talking about his two sacks at Pitt, I think one of his best plays of the [season] in my opinion was the safety at Iowa where he's circling out, he's bending down the line. He circled out and made a tackle, made an unbeliev- able tackle on an unbelievable back in the end zone, which I thought was a huge play in the game. Those are the plays where we wonder, could he be like [Garrett] Sickels, [Evan] Schwan, [Carl] Nassib, [Anthony] Zettel, [Austin] Johnson, dating back to [Deion] Barnes, those guys who just made those plays, those game- changing plays? Could he do that? And he has shown to this point that he can. ON PSU'S SCOUT TEAM OFFENSIVE LINE I coach against all of the O-line- men in the conference, and those guys are true Big Ten guard-, tackle-type players. They are aggressive, they are athletic. They give us a tremendous, tremendous look week in and week out. I'm really excited about them and guys like Mike Miranda. They de:- nitely help prepare us and better our- selves for the speed of the game. I'm excited about them. ON RECRUITING SAQUON BARKLEY We called him, got him on the phone when we :rst got here, maybe two weeks, I'm not sure the exact timeline, but we o;ered him and he was com- mitted to Rutgers. We o;ered him a scholarship, and it's just how humble he is. He was like, "I just got an o;er from Penn State?" We're like, "Yeah man." He's like, "That's unbelievable. Oh my God I can't believe it." We're like, "You're the real deal. We're not just throwing an o;er out there at you. We see something in you [and] we think you can be special." From that point on, myself and coach [Charles] Hu;'s relationship with him, it went beyond football. We were on him about his academics and making sure he was doing the right things moving forward, and he's just such a wonderful person. It's al- most like a storybook of a person where you say, I'm going to create the perfect guy to come in and play college football and the perfect guy to be a leader on your team. That's Saquon. He's a tremendous character kid, and he's always been that way. The stories from Whitehall – they would tell me he would do everything from babysit- ting the athletic director's kids to giv- ing away a medal at a track meet. That's who he is. ■ PSU's defensive line coach talks personnel, recruiting C O A C H S P E A K SEAN SPENCER

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