Penn State continues its preparations for the first game of the 2018 season when Appalachian State visits Beaver Stadium Saturday afternoon.
Welcoming the media to the Lasch football complex Wednesday evening, the Nittany Lions worked for about 10 minutes before gathering as a team, then breaking practice for the night. After, head coach James Franklin met with the team, then the media, to take questions.
Let’s go inside practice and Franklin’s post-practice interview, here:
1) First, some of the action.
Now that it’s game week, the ones vs. ones and the twos vs. twos is a thing of the past. The first and second team offenses and defenses were split off onto separate fields, working red zone against their respective scout teams.
I concentrated on the defense on the other side of the field.
1st:
DE Shareef Miller
DE Yetur Gross-Matos
DT Kevin Givens - Fred Hansard first in on the rotation
DT Rob Windsor
LB Cam Brown
LB Jan Johnson
LB Koa Farmer
S Garrett Taylor
S Nick Scott
CB John Reid
CB Amani Oruwariye
2nd:
DE Daniel Joseph
DE ? (I didn't see it, but assume Jayson Oweh)
DT Ellison Jordan
DT PJ Mustipher
LB Micah Parsons
LB Ellis Brooks
LB Jarvis Miller
S Ayron Monroe
S Lamont Wade
CB Tariq Castro-Fields
CB Donovan Johnson
2) I’m going to fast-forward to the positional meetings after practice. Brent Pry was not a happy camper, and though I couldn’t hear exactly what he was telling the team, he made his displeasure pretty obvious.
I’m guessing back-to-back touchdowns during the brief red zone period we saw, one to Joe Arcangelo (I think) and another one to a leaping Zack Kuntz, probably had something to do with the displeasure.
This will be a little bit of a theme from the coaches from today's practice, working to get more out of this group.
3) On the near side of the field, a few happenings to relay:
- Trace McSorley connected with Juwan Johnson for a touchdown right out of the gates.
- In the short time we were there, K.J. Hamler had at least three touchdown receptions.
- Mac Hippenhammer had two touchdowns, both with the second team.
- Danny Dalton had a pair of touchdowns, but one touchdown drop.
- Jon Holland running with the first team. Some more two tight end sets with Dalton and Pat Freiermuth.
- Jahan Dotson, Mac Hippenhammer and Brandon Polk all had work with the second team in the slot.
- Daniel George was a second team WR. Cam Sullivan-Brown also getting some second-team work.
- Will Fries worked exclusively at second team RT behind Chasz Wright.
- Miles Sanders had a rushing touchdown.
4) This was going to be part of the previous note, but I thought deserved it’s own little section.
Journey Brown and Ricky Slade both got second-team series with Sean Clifford. Slade earned plenty of praise from Franklin during his media session after practice, acknowledging that there’s plenty of room for pass protection improvement, but he’s still shown great potential already. I’m not sure exactly what this means for Mark Allen, but both Slade and Brown were the subject of plenty of James Franklin praise.
“Always in pass protection but (Slade is) further along there than we anticipated. The game makes sense to him. He’s picked it up faster than we thought,” said Franklin. “He’s probably more physically prepared. You guys look at him and he doesn't necessarily look like a freshman back. I think that extra month he had in the summer – we’re going to try to do that. That’s been good for us for the guys who can’t come in spring semester. He’s more physically prepared than I thought and he’s tough. He’s a tough guy. He runs like a tough guy.He’s really subtle and efficient with his movements. He’s not going to do things like Saquon that wow you, but he’s going to have these little subtle moves that get people off balance and then he runs through an arm tackle, lowers his shoulder and still makes people miss. It’s just more subtle. He’s just so efficient with his movements. We’ve been really impressed with him. Plays with a lot of confidence.”
Franklin then noted that Slade “has a chance to make a move” by the midpoint of the season to be Sanders’ primary backup.
5) One final note on some of the post-practice stuff.
I gathered from some of the comments and reactions after practice that tonight’s session had a little bit of frustration to it. Maybe a trend, maybe it’s not, but I think that Franklin is trying to pull even more out of this group than what it has shown so far.
Because what it has shown so far is that it has the talent to be a clear top 20, top 15 type of team, but it has not yet shown the practice habits to be a clear top 10 team. One of the clearly heard comments made from Franklin to the team revolved around the notion that he didn’t want them to have to come in on a Sunday and say to themselves “that won’t ever happen again” because they’d simply allowed bad practice habits to get in the way of a win on Saturday.
Again, it was stressed that this game on Saturday is the Super Bowl and has to be the Super Bowl for these guys to accomplish what they want. They can’t be chided for energy at a practice like today’s.
Cause for concern? I’m not getting that sense, only that it seems like Franklin is convinced that he can get another gear out of this group.
———
That’s going to be it from me tonight. Photos coming.
Welcoming the media to the Lasch football complex Wednesday evening, the Nittany Lions worked for about 10 minutes before gathering as a team, then breaking practice for the night. After, head coach James Franklin met with the team, then the media, to take questions.
Let’s go inside practice and Franklin’s post-practice interview, here:
1) First, some of the action.
Now that it’s game week, the ones vs. ones and the twos vs. twos is a thing of the past. The first and second team offenses and defenses were split off onto separate fields, working red zone against their respective scout teams.
I concentrated on the defense on the other side of the field.
1st:
DE Shareef Miller
DE Yetur Gross-Matos
DT Kevin Givens - Fred Hansard first in on the rotation
DT Rob Windsor
LB Cam Brown
LB Jan Johnson
LB Koa Farmer
S Garrett Taylor
S Nick Scott
CB John Reid
CB Amani Oruwariye
2nd:
DE Daniel Joseph
DE ? (I didn't see it, but assume Jayson Oweh)
DT Ellison Jordan
DT PJ Mustipher
LB Micah Parsons
LB Ellis Brooks
LB Jarvis Miller
S Ayron Monroe
S Lamont Wade
CB Tariq Castro-Fields
CB Donovan Johnson
2) I’m going to fast-forward to the positional meetings after practice. Brent Pry was not a happy camper, and though I couldn’t hear exactly what he was telling the team, he made his displeasure pretty obvious.
I’m guessing back-to-back touchdowns during the brief red zone period we saw, one to Joe Arcangelo (I think) and another one to a leaping Zack Kuntz, probably had something to do with the displeasure.
This will be a little bit of a theme from the coaches from today's practice, working to get more out of this group.
3) On the near side of the field, a few happenings to relay:
- Trace McSorley connected with Juwan Johnson for a touchdown right out of the gates.
- In the short time we were there, K.J. Hamler had at least three touchdown receptions.
- Mac Hippenhammer had two touchdowns, both with the second team.
- Danny Dalton had a pair of touchdowns, but one touchdown drop.
- Jon Holland running with the first team. Some more two tight end sets with Dalton and Pat Freiermuth.
- Jahan Dotson, Mac Hippenhammer and Brandon Polk all had work with the second team in the slot.
- Daniel George was a second team WR. Cam Sullivan-Brown also getting some second-team work.
- Will Fries worked exclusively at second team RT behind Chasz Wright.
- Miles Sanders had a rushing touchdown.
4) This was going to be part of the previous note, but I thought deserved it’s own little section.
Journey Brown and Ricky Slade both got second-team series with Sean Clifford. Slade earned plenty of praise from Franklin during his media session after practice, acknowledging that there’s plenty of room for pass protection improvement, but he’s still shown great potential already. I’m not sure exactly what this means for Mark Allen, but both Slade and Brown were the subject of plenty of James Franklin praise.
“Always in pass protection but (Slade is) further along there than we anticipated. The game makes sense to him. He’s picked it up faster than we thought,” said Franklin. “He’s probably more physically prepared. You guys look at him and he doesn't necessarily look like a freshman back. I think that extra month he had in the summer – we’re going to try to do that. That’s been good for us for the guys who can’t come in spring semester. He’s more physically prepared than I thought and he’s tough. He’s a tough guy. He runs like a tough guy.He’s really subtle and efficient with his movements. He’s not going to do things like Saquon that wow you, but he’s going to have these little subtle moves that get people off balance and then he runs through an arm tackle, lowers his shoulder and still makes people miss. It’s just more subtle. He’s just so efficient with his movements. We’ve been really impressed with him. Plays with a lot of confidence.”
Franklin then noted that Slade “has a chance to make a move” by the midpoint of the season to be Sanders’ primary backup.
5) One final note on some of the post-practice stuff.
I gathered from some of the comments and reactions after practice that tonight’s session had a little bit of frustration to it. Maybe a trend, maybe it’s not, but I think that Franklin is trying to pull even more out of this group than what it has shown so far.
Because what it has shown so far is that it has the talent to be a clear top 20, top 15 type of team, but it has not yet shown the practice habits to be a clear top 10 team. One of the clearly heard comments made from Franklin to the team revolved around the notion that he didn’t want them to have to come in on a Sunday and say to themselves “that won’t ever happen again” because they’d simply allowed bad practice habits to get in the way of a win on Saturday.
Again, it was stressed that this game on Saturday is the Super Bowl and has to be the Super Bowl for these guys to accomplish what they want. They can’t be chided for energy at a practice like today’s.
Cause for concern? I’m not getting that sense, only that it seems like Franklin is convinced that he can get another gear out of this group.
———
That’s going to be it from me tonight. Photos coming.
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