Penn State Spring Practice Preview - Coaches

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1:01Every team, every topic, everywhere. This is Belize. Hi everyone and welcome to State of State, a Penn State football show presented by Fandall. Play your game. I'm your host, Tom Hanif, and he is former Penn State quarterback, Tommy Stevens. Today, we're taking a look at Penn State's upcoming spring practices from a coaching staff standpoint. There's a lot of change in turnover, so we're going to address the coaching staff changes for Penn State football going on this time of year, and later on in the week, we're going to talk about spring practice from a player's perspective, because there are a lot of position battles that are going to be really exciting as we get closer and closer to the 2026 season. Hope everybody had a great pre-16 day on Monday. Hope everybody is somehow alive today after St. Patrick's Day earlier on this week. By the way, enjoy March Madness courtesy of our friends at

2:05Fandall. We invite you to play your game. It's going to be a hectic couple of days, so we invite you to hop on Fandall and have some fun, and hopefully make a little extra money for yourself, because it's that time of year, and taxes are right around the corner, so just knock yourself out. So, Tommy, you've been at just about every level of this sport. You've got to see what it's like from the major FPS level, the National Football League, and now you're currently playing in the CFL. So, inevitably, you've dealt with the change, the turnover with coaching staffs this time of year, whether it be spring practice or OTAs. This type of turnover for Penn State football is very, very fresh. Obviously, something like this has not happened in well over a decade for the football program. So, from your perspective, what is this time of year like for this new coaching staff under Mack Campbell? Yeah, I think you get to know on the head there. Inevitably, I guess it's going to possibly happen in this era of college football, but it's more so realistic to maybe the

3:07pro football aspect. This kind of thing happens with a lot of turnover almost every year, and at least playing in the CFL has introduced me to that, because for most people that don't know, there are more times than not. Nobody's signing more than one or a two-year deal in the CFL. So, there's a lot of moving parts in our league. So, you kind of get used to seeing guys on different teams and whatnot. So, point me, this spring will be just as important for the coaching staff at Penn State that it will be the players, in my opinion, and it's probably the first time that that's been the case in a very long time, at least as a collective group. Sure, we've had different coaches come and go through Penn State as time is going on, but as far as a whole new staff coming in, we haven't seen this in many years. So, it'll be just as important for the guys on the coaching staff, getting to know the players, finding out what they have as a group, and it just as the players are going to be fighting for jobs. So, now it's as important

4:09of a spring as Penn State has had in a very long time. If you take a look at Penn State's coaching staff list on its primary website, there's the coaching staff and the support staff. So, there are some familiar names on the support staff on the likes of Dan Conner who've been retained some of the pieces here and there, but in terms of the primary coaching staff, the primary position coaches. The leftovers from last season, it's pretty much Terry Smith and Justin Lustig. Everybody else is a new face, whether they be from Iowa State or someplace else. So, inevitably, this team is going to be dealing with its previous identity versus its new identity, the way we used to do things versus how we do things, but it's going to be very mixed in that the Iowa State guys will have a leg up walking in and that they'll pretty much know what their expectations are. And I think especially the defensive side of the ball is going to be really interesting with Dan Lynn kind of being this outlier and X factor coming in from USC and UCLA

5:11before that. So, I think that's where you're probably going to see the greatest change during spring practice and maybe see periods or hear about periods of hey, the offense is ahead of the defense. I fully expect that to happen, but in your experience this time of year, what is that ebb and flow of like the offense at a good day or the defense at a better day? Are there even or you know, the defense has consistently been ahead of the offense? What's your experience been? Yeah, it's actually been a little bit of the opposite and in my experience, typically speaking, it's a little bit easier for the defense to perhaps have success early on versus the offense. As you can imagine, there's a lot of moving parts that they go with playing offense at football, and whereas in those first we kind of talked a little bit about it last episode, but about like the installs for defense and what plays are being installed and like what you're allowed to basically do. It's a little bit easier for the defense to install the first couple days and it is the offense and that's just at least how it was for us. So, it wasn't too

6:13uncommon, I guess you could say, for the defense to kind of kick our butts a little bit in the first couple practices and as the competitors that we were, we didn't like that and ultimately it made both sides of the ball better. So, as far as like with all of the different changes and all of the new moving parts for this team, what to wait and see. Obviously, that's kind of been the the motto almost of our offseason so far as wait and see, but depending on how they install, depending on who's going to be available for spring practice and ultimately getting to know the guys and finding out what their skill sets are. There's a lot of different things that they're going to have an impact on the spring. And I know Penn State fans are excited to hear the early reports of spring practice, but obviously keep in mind whatever happens in these next couple of months is not necessarily a indicative of what is going to happen in the future. There's still plenty of time until we get to August and September, but it's an exciting time of year. I

7:17mean, it's the first time we're going to get a chance to see the, you know, the Matt Campbell era. And so, I know that I'm excited to see it and I know that I'm excited for the guys that are at Penn State, and I'm sure the fans are just as excited as well. So we'll see. We talked about it before. This is still the get to know you phase. How much can that actually continue on during spring practices when you're trying to go through install? Like it's, hey, we all would like to be brothers in Sincum by Robin at the end of the day. Like you need to know the playbook and that's happening now. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there's going to be obviously, you're going to be afforded a little bit of grace, I would imagine. It's just with it being brand new and whatnot, but I don't take that for granted. Like, you know, if somebody, just use an example, if somebody is using, sorry, if somebody is, you know, making makes a mistake in front of you. If you're behind in line and the guy's the projected starter makes a mistake. Like the guys in the back of us also need to be taking note of this just to, you know, not make the same mistake twice. Like that sets kind of a

8:19known term, I would say, like, don't make the same mistake twice, but that doesn't always mean that you made the first mistake either. I know that college coaches are going to be evaluating things as a collective group. So if there are people that are making mistakes in your group, you have to make note of that and then try to correct it yourself, even if it wasn't you. So a lot of these things are kind of the ones that are, you know, honed in on or focused on during the spring and gives you a little bit extra time. Again, it's just glorified extra practices that keep guys in football shape almost, but it sure is an exciting time of year. I loved spring practice because it gave you opportunities to really choose what you wanted to work on for that spring. I know I always went into a spring with a certain number of things that I knew that I wanted to get better at focus on. So could be the same for some of the guys that are at Penn State, but with a lot of things that are moving on right now and then things that are going on, I'm sure guys are kind of just trying to figure out how things are going to go. So yeah, it's an exciting time. I want to stick with the defenses you're making that point there about Dan and Lynn.

9:20It's been a lot of questions and speculation of what the defense will look like and there's the concept of multiplicity, all those different sets, those sorts of things, and Penn State, under James Franklin, regardless who the coordinator was for quite a while was running of four to five, four downline backers, four down linemen, excuse me, two linebackers and five defensive backs. At times that would shuffle and maybe be a more conventional four three, depending on whatever package the offense was putting out there, they would they would acquiesce to that. But there's been the question of like, okay, well, what's this going to be under Dan and Lynn? There's also the question of, okay, Matt Campbell, with Iowa State and big 12, you saw a lot of a three three five. Would that work in the big 10? It would Dan and Lynn pick that up and do a three three five? Is it a four three? Is it a four two five? So all these questions right now, can they be answered in spring practice? Does the coaching staff already have an idea of what they're going to do? And now it's just kind of getting your hands in the proverbial dirt and seeing

10:21like, who could fit where? And maybe not fitting a square peg into a round hole. Yeah, I think each, you know, each coordinator is going to come in with a system that they prefer to run, you know, whatever they're favorite type of defenses. So that's going to be one of the main factors is, you know, what they like to do. Now, do they have the personnel to run that? Is the next question. Now, do they have right guys for that defense? You know, third, are they, you know, good at this? So they are, is this something they feel like they can have success with? So there's a lot of different things that you can do. And I think having guys that, you know, have had experience with different defenses is a positive. But I know for a fact that it might be something that could be concerning for perhaps somebody that doesn't, isn't familiar with system. You know what I mean? If you aren't familiar with running a 335, but you have a coordinator that wants to run that, if you're the head coach, it might be something that you may struggle with, maybe allowing or trusting. But I think people with proven track records is, you know,

11:25you bring a guy like this to Penn State that you'd prove in track record, right? He's more than qualified and, you know, we'll see which style of defense they decide on going. But we shouldn't know that here within the first couple of weeks of practice, what they want to do defensively, at least as a base. So yeah. Curious to see what they ultimately land on because we'll get to the players and the depth chart that we can at least attempt to guess at going into the offseason, or in the offseason, but we're not really sure where that's all going to play out because that competition's happening right now. On the offensive side with Taylor Mauser, we've talked about it before, is that we have an expectation that the offense is going to look similar to what Penn State fans have been accustomed to, 11 personnel, 12, 13, meaning one down back, one tight end, or two tight ends, or three tight ends, and talked about the number of tight ends of Penn State. Let's work with not necessarily going to have all those guys available for spring practice. So, and I think that's more of a prominent issue on the offensive side of the ball going into spring

12:28practice. Any concern for you in terms of the injuries that might at least affect the numbers that Taylor Mauser and the offense have to work with in spring? Yeah, I mean, obviously you wish that you could have everybody out there. That's that case scenario that you're able to have your your entire unit available for spring ball, especially in a time like this where it's a new place, new system, new guys, there's a lot of new things. And so the quicker you can get guys in there in order to start getting used to doing whatever they're going to be, like whatever style it is of offense they want to do, you know, you do wish you could have those guys. But ultimately, the guys that are banged up have played a lot of football. So if you are going to miss anybody, like it's it's okay that you're going to miss some guys that have played some college football in the past, but that's kind of just looking like it's the silver lining of this situation. And in at the end of the day again, it's just these are just extra practices. You kind of look at it like extra credit almost. Like I know like in our league, for example, the CFL, we don't have OTAs

13:31in this league. So having a spring ball is very, very nice having OTAs in the NFL also very, very nice. So it's something that I wish that we did up here, but it's just ultimately not to not in our CBA, I guess. So but the end of the day, it's it's very, very important to have these extra practices for the guys that are at Penn State just because of all the new moving parts going into the season. Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCartle and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a new show from Washington Post opinion called reasonably optimistic. And it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. Every Wednesday, I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward. It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems where they are. You know, I am a believer in America and it's worth fighting for. Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. College basketball is nonstop big games tight spreads momentum swings every night. And now Fandall is giving you a way to

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15:37or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800 327 50 54 24 7 support in Massachusetts or call 877 8 hope and why or text hope and why in New York for Louisiana call 1 877 7 7 0 78 67 state of state is a proud supporter of blue white outfitters blue white outfitters was created as a retail shop meant to highlight the confidence competitiveness and fearlessness of the elite athletes found throughout the history of Penn State University. Check out their lockdown you and lawn boys merchandise today all sales from blue white outfitters directly benefit Penn State student athletes also official state of state merchandise is available now support the show and grab state of state t-shirts hoodies hats and more visit www.bluewhiteoutfitters.com today we have a decent understanding of certain positions which

16:45guys could be expected to be starters or just contributors I'll put it that way in your experience regardless of the level of the sport how many times was a position battle maybe determined in spring practice or is that something almost consistently it's like now you figure that stuff out in fall camp I think it's a little bit of both so like I guess I'll fall back on the the quarterback competition that I was in during spring with Tracy Sorley so back in 2016 with kind of I guess in a way similar at least just because we had a new coordinator and Joe Morehead a new offense and you know for us it was a new quarterback coach as well so there's a lot of new pieces for at least our room and then really ultimately it's the offense because we were learning a whole new system so going back to that I remember trace was I mean days ahead of where I was at least that spring and I remember he had a very very good spring I didn't perform to the level that I had wanted to at least at that point especially competing for you know the job and I

17:46remember we get to the spring game and trace lights it up had like two incompletions I think and just it was days ahead and again for people that don't know about how Penn State would do the the blue-white game then I'm sure you're able to kind of figure it out the blue team was kind of like the ones and twos and then the white team was basically everybody else so trace ran with the blue team and I would run with the white team so it was kind of a there was tough sledding for for me that day and I remember walking away from it thinking that they were gonna name Trace the starter right away and I said you know we're gonna wait it out till fall camp which gave me an opportunity to take more time and and kind of I guess make it much closer in fall camp than a lot of people maybe thought on the team at least and so I had a much better fall camp kind of made their decision a little bit difficult on that they ultimately ruled with trace obviously it's hard to say there wasn't the right thing to do trace lit it up but it was you know that fall camp was almost the deciding factor so there are sometimes where you kind of it is it's kind of like a feeling out process and and for Penn State in this year it's exactly what they need as far as the time frame

18:47they have with the guys and the practices that are allowed to to get this point considering spring practices start this coming Tuesday March 24th and they'll end as part of blue white weekend on April 25th so again at the time of this recording no information is out there regarding the blue white game itself and to the point you were just saying about you know blue team versus white team ones and twos versus everybody else how what's the best way that that can be done in your opinion is it like hey it would be best if the the one offense faced the one defense or do you prefer to see the one offense versus the two defense and vice versa like to me as an outsider it'd be like you'd like to get best on best that would make sense yeah yeah and it really just depends on what you want to get out of the spring game and like looking back on my experiences with the spring game it was ultimately we kind of in a way made it a show almost so hey this was a way of making at least Penn State fans feel good about what they had so you wanted your number one offense to look very very

19:51good so you put them against the other three's in your force you want your number one defense to look very very good so you put them against your three's in your force so ultimately it was kind of a way of maybe manipulating some people that didn't know a ton about the roster at the time but you know as a competitor at least from from my perspective I would have loved to have done the whole you know you select two captains for each team then they draft teams like I would have loved that that would have been awesome for me but from a coach's perspective and understanding that you know at the end of the day this is just a glorified practice we don't want to get anybody hurt I can also see that being the reason why they did it the way they did it so but yeah I think that would have been pretty cool to and and based off of the things that I've heard I wouldn't be surprised to see maybe a draft in between you know two sides of of the ball just based off of the conversations we've had in the past about you know them competing and the loser has to you know clean we talked about last time like maybe they'll play the spring game and whoever wins the spring game gets to have a very very nice dinner and and the loser has to

20:58hot dogs or something you know what I mean like it sits what have heard right what was awesome I'm not going to fight you yeah there's there's some people that will prefer the hot dogs but who knows yeah do you have guys up there throwing the game just to get hot dogs I don't know one thing I'm really going to pay attention to is going to be the top line position coaches and kind of like I was saying before if you're on go PSU sports.com and you look at the top line position coaches there's only Terry Smith and Justin Lustig who are leftover from the you know that top line from last season and then when you go into the support staff you see the likes of Dan Connor and you see the likes of Jordan Lucas so there are going to be those guys who are integral support staff analysts those sorts of things but you do have a lot of change when it comes to position coaches and Mauser as I mentioned is the offensive coordinator but he's going to be working with the tight ends the on broom field working with the safeties offensive line is Ryan Clanton running backs is Saban Huggins and there's been some turnover at that position even over the last handful of years from the coaching staff standpoint that is I cuck a malau defensive line run

22:00game coordinator chief Moore who just came in for the wide receivers of beleaguered position group for Penn State for quite some time Christian Smith and I think there's some excitement about him working with the edge rushers but you're certainly going to miss Dion Barnes linebackers Tyson Vape is coming in Jake Waters working with the quarterbacks he was there at Iowa State so that's one where you feel really really secure in terms of working with Rocco Becht and working with Alex Mansky and then all the different support staff is going to be there so is there a specific position coach where you think there's going to be more of a microscope than any other position I think quarterback is always going to be one that jumps up but maybe other than quarterback I guess other than quarterback probably the receiver room I would probably be my first thought it's hard to say just based off of you know maybe the things that have happened over the last couple of years at Penn State with the receiver room so I think that there's there's high expectations out of that room and Penn State fans want to see this addressed so yeah that's

23:00the kind of my first thought would be the receiver room and also for me I think the interesting piece is linebacker because you are getting three guys at linebacker from Iowa State and we'll get to the players later on this week you have three guys who produced quite a bit at linebacker last season you get Tony Rohos back as well from last season who dealt with injuries dealt with injuries last two seasons frankly so I'm really curious to see what linebacker looks like I'm curious to see how defensive end progresses so I think there's a lot of position coaches that not to say like oh you got your workout out for you or you don't have a lot of talent to work with I think there's plenty of talent here the other thing that I'm starting to hear is depending on who you talk to within the media or who you listen to that sort of thing there's some people are like hey you know the expectations are not low but I guess safe for Matt Campbell in 2026 and that it's like hey you know what last year was crazy there's a lot of turnover a lot of change come in favorable

24:02schedule they could win some games and I don't think anybody's jumping to the tremendous conclusion some people are some people are jumping the wild Penn State compete for the college football playoff I'm not going there and then there are people who are saying boy the he better get into the college football playoff and it just seems like a very polarizing time within Penn State football's history and I tend to be more conservative in this weight and C type of approach with this coaching staff and with this team but for you sitting here in March like what's your what's your feeling overall in terms of expectations yeah I mean I think just like any other time and in Penn State's history we're going to be expected to win that's more so Penn State is a tier one program and they're going to be expected to win so I think Matt Campbell knows that going into accepting this job it's obviously something that would be sought after I mean anybody would be lucky to have the job of the head football coach at Penn State and I'm sure he's very very proud of that but with that being said

25:03it comes great responsibility and so you know maybe maybe provided a bit of grace but ultimately at least in this day and age of college football you aren't provided much grace and in almost any level or any aspect of of college football and it's almost becoming all collegiate sports and professional sports like you aren't really afforded the same grace that you may have been in the past it's it's become such a win now business and you know for better for worse I do think that you know maybe you would you know be able to be provided a little bit of grace it could be beneficial for people I just think that the leash has become much shorter for some guys and like you I was talking about this with some people recently just about quarterback play like you you won't ever see anybody throw more than like 15 interceptions anymore without being replaced it's just it's it's realistic now like it psyched into the last time that somebody's

26:04not been replaced after throwing you know again we'll just use 20 just to be safe yeah like the user guy like Peyton Manning who in my opinion is a top five guy regardless of how you feel about Peyton he's a top five guy guy through like 26 interceptions as first year it's it's the rookie record he would have never been allowed to beat the starting quarterback for the coach next year in this day and age right and the guy ends up being one of the best ever so another guy Brett far still leads the NFL interceptions would not have been given the same leash in a day like today so it's you know a lot of guys that we look back on in in in the past were we're all for the lot of different you know I guess luxuries of a given opportunity I guess not getting the rug pulled out from underneath them too early which you know for better for worse right like it's just become more of a the the little things have become much more important in today's game and so you know just back ultimately to the question is my expectation for Penn State football is is to win majority of their games I do look like the look of their schedule but it's also based off

27:07of the things that I know from last year and there's a lot of things that are moving parts I mean Penn State's not the only team in the country that's going to be going through a lot of different changes this year so that that provides a lot more opportunity for other teams to have success too so I think if anything then I owe and in all these things that have changed with college football have made it much more balanced which makes you know our jobs of of predicting what's going to happen much harder so it's it's just as much I remember at the beginning of the playoff last year it was anybody's national championship at that point in my opinion and Indiana really separated themselves obviously as the playoff went on so as we've said many times before we will see yeah I'm just excited to start learning more hearing me too who's standing out what what the buzz is like in general like I got so tired for years of it's not like smoke screens or false information but coaches whether it be James Franklin or other coaches saying it's like

28:07this guy flashed and then the season would roll around and you're like where's flash where is the sky where is that person there where is that production that you thought you were going to get so yeah we'll wait and see uh and I mentioned before March madness is getting underway as of right now according to our friends at Fandall there are three teams tied for the best odds to win the men's national championship in college basketball Duke Arizona and Michigan plus 380 we encourage you to use Fandall and play your game get in our comments section tell us how you're feeling about the coaching staff getting in the spring practice which position coaches or coordinators that you're really focusing on let us know what you're thinking about he's Tommy Stevens I'm Tom Hanuffin thank you so much for joining us here on state of state a Penn State football show presented by Fandall thank you all so much for joining us this episode and our entire library of shows is available now on YouTube Apple podcasts Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts please like comment subscribe rate us and turn on notifications follow us

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