Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/970731
A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 8 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 15 well as true freshmen. So it's a long list of candidates. ON THE DEFENSIVE TACKLESI think obviously we're making progress with some young guys, but we've got some redshirt freshmen who we're depending on, which is not ideal. You would love to have seniors, juniors and maybe a few redshirt sophomores sprinkled in on the two-deep. There are obviously a lot of teams across the country that play with redshirt freshmen, and we have to be ready to do that as well, but I wouldn't say that as of right now. There are guys who are showing flashes, but we're not ready to crown anybody at this point. ON MILES SANDERSI'm not really a favorites guy. I very rarely equate suc- cess or someone's personal growth to one area. It's kind of everything. He's been really good in his role. He's been patient, but there's also a part where he's been impatient at times, which that is how I would want it. I want him to be hungry in getting on the field. He's han- dled things the right way and grown dramatically. … He could have played at a lot of places the past two years, but I think [because of] the combination of how he did play, how he did prepare and who he was behind, training and learn- ing and watching all those champi- onship habits and behaviors, he's pretty far along ring now. I know our defensive coaches and our team think really highly of him with what he's done in the weight room this off-season and what he's done on the field so far. The chal- lenge is, he'll make four people miss and go 80 and we're all like, [Ho-hum] next play, because we've been a little spoiled with Saquon Barkley the past couple of years. But I do think Miles is in that conversation, in terms of what he's been able to show and what he's been able to do so far. ON MICHAL MENETMichal is probably one of the guys in the program who has improved the most in a lot of different areas, in terms of fundamentals and technique. In high school he was just a better athlete than everybody, but tech- nique and fundamentals and mentality, durability, he's probably made since the end of the season until now probably as much improvement as anybody in our program. I'm really pleased with him. He's legitimately fighting for a starting job and getting a lot of reps with the [first team] right now. ON THE OFFENSIVE LINEWe came into it knowing that the O-line had a chance to be a strength, and so far that seems to be the case. It's hard sometimes to judge that based on the lack of experience that we have at D-tackle, losing three seniors, so it's hard to kind of balance that as well. Are they as far along as I think they are? They're not going against three senior defensive tackles right now.