While working to compile my Penn State all-decade team, I was frequently reminded during the past few weeks that the Nittany Lion teams from 2010 to 2019 hold a special place in my heart. I don’t think I’m the only follower who feels that way.
When the NCAA placed its onerous sanctions on the program in July 2012, sportswriters across the country said en masse that it might be a decade or more before the Nittany Lions would have a team that was worthy of Top 25 consideration. If you had watched ESPN or read the national commentary in the aftermath of the sanctions, you would have heard this view articulated repeatedly. The experts felt that the program wouldn’t be nationally relevant again for years.
But coach Bill O’Brien didn’t succumb to that sense of despair, nor did his assistant coaches or players. And when O’Brien and his staff left after the 2013 season, James Franklin came aboard talking optimistically about the future, even though the program was still dealing with the fallout from its scholarship restrictions. Together, Penn State’s coaches and players continued to battle, and from 2012 through 2019, they were able to accomplish something miraculous.
It has now been nearly eight years since the sanctions were imposed, and Penn State has yet to suffer a losing season. In addition, the Nittany Lions have won a Big Ten championship and are about to play in their third New Year’s Six bowl game in the past four seasons. If you are an avid Penn State football fan, you have to be thrilled with that performance. The program has met and conquered what many believed was the biggest challenge it had ever faced.
Now, on to the all-decade selections, beginning at quarterback.
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Before Trace McSorley became the team’s starter at the beginning of the 2016 season, the consensus among the many Penn State fans to whom I had spoken over the years was that Kerry Collins was the best quarterback to ever play for the Nittany Lions.
Collins wasn’t at the top of the Penn State career or single-season passing charts; during his two years as the team’s passing leader (1993 and ’94), he threw for 4,284 yards, with 34 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. But what Collins did do was lead Penn State to a 12-0 record in 1994 and what should have been, at least in my mind, a share of the national championship. That he ended up playing in the NFL for 17 seasons only helped reinforce his reputation among PSU fans.
But then came McSorley. In his three years as Penn State’s starter (2016, ’17 and ’18), he led the Lions to a 31-9 record and broke almost every major school passing record. McSorley holds PSU’s career passing mark with 9,899 yards. He’s got the highest and second-highest single-season yardage totals in school history with 3,614 yards in 2016 and 3,570 in 2017. He’s also first in career touchdown passes with 77 and has the most 200-yard passing games in Penn State history with 28.
I could fill page after page of this magazine with statistics reflecting what McSorley accomplished during his three seasons as a starter at Penn State. But what impressed me the most about him was the competitive spirit that he displayed from the first day he arrived on campus before the start of the 2014 season. Penn State was one of the few schools that wanted him as a quarterback coming out of high school. He was a three-star recruit who was listed at 6-foot-0, 185 pounds, and a lot of people didn’t think he had a future as a starting quarterback at Penn State.
I have to admit, I was one of those people. But McSorley came to Penn State with tremendous faith in his abilities and a desire to win over the skeptics.
“I don’t know if anything has ever come easy to Trace,” Franklin said prior to Penn State’s matchup against Kentucky in the Citrus Bowl last season. “He’s earned everything he’s gotten in life. No one has given him anything. … I think he’s built for these types of things. I think that’s why there’s so much confidence and trust in our locker room [and among the] coaches with him, because all he knows how to do is walk in a room with a chip on his shoulder and prove people wrong.”
McSorley certainly proved me wrong in my evaluation. In my book, he is the best quarterback to ever play at Penn State.
At running back, the all-decade choice could not be more obvious. Saquon Barkley has been described by Franklin as “a once-in-a-lifetime, generational player.” No argument here.
We all know that if Barkley had stayed at Penn State for four years, he would have left as the school’s all-time rushing leader. In just three seasons, he amassed 3,843 yards and 43 touchdowns on 671 carries (5.73 ypc). That career yardage total places him second behind Evan Royster, who rushed for 3,932 yards over a four-year period.
In my mind, Barkley rivals Curt Warner, Blair Thomas, Ki-Jana Carter, John Cappelletti and possibly Lenny Moore as the best running back to ever play at Penn State. But there is no debate at all as to which of Penn State’s many great running backs was the most versatile. That honor clearly goes to Barkley. His performance throughout the 2017 season made that abundantly clear. Not only was he Penn State’s leading rusher that year with 1,271 yards, he also caught 54 passes for 632 yards and averaged 28.4 yards per kickoff return, scoring touchdowns against Indiana and Ohio State. He finished second in the country that season in all-purpose yards, totaling 2,329 for an average of 179.2 yards per game.
When the NCAA penalized Penn State in 2012, there was never any doubt that it would impact the quantity of recruits coming into the program. But many people also thought it would impact the quality of the players that the team was able to sign. There was a widespread belief that Penn State would be deprived of the kind of playmakers it would need in order to be competitive in the Big Ten.
Obviously, that did not turn out to be the case. McSorley signed even before the postseason ban had elapsed, and Barkley joined him a year later. In the fall of 2016, they spearheaded a resurgence that made Penn State the season’s biggest storyline.
If those two are the obvious choices at their respective positions for Penn State’s all-decade team, the selections at wide receiver aren’t a whole lot more complicated. My picks are Allen Robinson, Chris Godwin and DaeSean Hamilton.
Robinson ranks third in school history with 177 receptions for 2,474 yards and 17 touchdowns. In 2014, he set a Penn State single-season receiving record with 97 catches for 1,432 yards and six touchdowns. Godwin is Penn State’s seventh-leading receiver with 154 catches for 2,421 yards and 18 TDs, and Hamilton is the school’s all-time leader in career receptions with 214 for 2,842 yards and 18 TDs.
At the tight end position, Mike Gesicki gets the nod over Penn State’s current starter, Pat Freiermuth. Gesicki’s 129 career receptions are the most in school history by a tight end, while he and Freiermuth are tied for the all-time lead with 15 touchdown receptions apiece. Freiermuth recently announced that he was planning to return for his junior season, forgoing the NFL Draft for at least one more year. If I were picking this team a year from now, Freiermuth might be the choice. He’s off to a fantastic start.
Up front, Donovan Smith and Ryan Bates are my offensive tackles, Connor McGovern and Stefen Wisniewski are my guards, and Michal Menet is my center. Since the start of the Joe Paterno era in 1966, Wisniewski is the only offensive lineman I can recall who started all four years. From 2007 to 2010, he played guard and center for the Nittany Lions. Following the 2010 season, he was named a first-team All-Big Ten selection at guard.
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On the other side of the ball, Yetur Gross-Matos and Carl Nassib are my selections at defensive end. Gross-Matos had an outstanding 2018 season, finishing second in the Big Ten with 20 tackles for loss and eight sacks. He was a second-team All-Conference choice following the season. This year, Gross-Matos has 14.5 TFL and 8.5 sacks and recently received consensus first-team All-Big Ten notice. Nassib was a former walk-on who enjoyed a spectacular senior season in 2015, earning Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year honors, as well as the Ted Hendricks Award and consensus All-America notice, after finishing with 15.5 sacks.
At defensive tackle, my selections are Devon Still and Austin Johnson. Still was a first-team All-Big Ten selection following the 2011 season and became a second-round draft choice of the Cincinnati Bengals in 2012. Johnson was a second-team All-Big Ten selection in 2015 and ended up being chosen in the second round of the 2016 draft by the Tennessee Titans.
At linebacker, Micah Parsons recently became the first Penn Stater of the decade to be named one of five semifinalists for the Butkus Award. He has been Penn State’s leading tackler the past two years, totaling 83 stops as a freshman and making 95 tackles this year, including 11 tackles for loss and three sacks. Earlier this month, he was named the Big Ten’s Linebacker of the Year.
My two other all-decade linebackers are Michael Mauti and Gerald Hodges. Hodges was Penn State’s leading tackler in 2011 and ’12, combining to make 215 stops during those two seasons. Mauti was the emotional leader of Penn State’s defense throughout the 2012 season. He and Michael Zordich were the players who helped hold the team together after the NCAA gave players the opportunity to transfer without having to sit out at their new schools. A handful of players took advantage of that opportunity, but most did not. Without the leadership of Mauti and Zordich, I’m not sure Penn State would have been able to finish the season with an 8-4 record.
One linebacker who was hard to leave off my all-decade team was Mike Hull, who led Penn State with 140 tackles during the 2014 season.
In the secondary, my two cornerback selections are Christian Campbell and Amani Oruwariye, and my picks at safety are Adrian Amos and Marcus Allen.
Amos was a fifth-round selection in the 2015 NFL Draft by the Chicago Bears, while Allen went in the fifth round to the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2018. Allen was the Nittany Lions’ leading tackler in 2016 with 120 stops.
The cornerback spots were difficult to pick. I went back and forth between Campbell and Grant Haley, and I can understand why many Penn State fans would choose the latter. Haley was the focal point of two of the most exciting plays of the past decade: a 60-yard return of a blocked field goal that supplied the winning TD in a 24-21 upset of Ohio State in 2016, and later that season, a fourth-down tackle against Wisconsin that clinched a 38-31 victory for the conference championship.
Oruwariye was a second-team All-Big Ten selection following the 2018 season. He led Penn State that year with three interceptions and had 12 pass break-ups. Franklin’s first Florida recruit at PSU, Oruwariye was a fifth-round draft choice of the Detroit Lions this past April.
All of the players mentioned here should be remembered for the part they played in continuing Penn State’s great football legacy. Many of those players signed with PSU at a time when the program was being dismissed as a potential championship contender. As recruits, they believed in the coaches’ vision. As players, they helped turn that vision into reality. They enabled the Lions to retake their place among the greatest programs in the game.
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