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Magazine Preview: Long-Distance Dedication

Blue White Illustrated's newest magazine has been printed and mailed to all of our subscribers. Check out one of our feature stories from the latest issue, here:

From a distance, it might seem like an imperfect storm, an unfortunate confluence of good moves and bad timing.

The Penn State football team had hired a new offensive coordinator and a new offensive line coach a few months earlier, and the change in leadership meant that Michal Menet, Will Fries and their fellow linemen were going to have to adapt to a different way of doing business this spring. Even with James Franklin hailing the new coaches as savvy tacticians who understood that it would be better to build on what had come before rather than trying to replace it wholesale, there were going to be a few transitional difficulties. There always are.

And then came the shutdown. When Penn State’s football program went dark along with the rest of the sports world due to the COVID-19 crisis, those transitional difficulties suddenly began to look a whole lot more daunting than they had seemed just a few months earlier. That’s how they looked to outsiders, at any rate. Not to Menet.

“It’s really not that bad,” said the fifth-year senior center. “Most of what you do, besides walking through it and being able to run it live, is studying the film, watching clips of past offenses doing it, that type of stuff. So it’s really not that bad. As long as you’re taking really good notes and going back through them, being able to look at your notes while you’re watching film, I don’t think it’s too bad. Obviously, you’re missing the component of being able to walk through it live with the defense. But I’ve been visualizing plays a lot, walking through them, visualizing defenses. So I’m getting by. I’m making it through, and I think I’m doing pretty well.”

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Penn State Nittany Lions Football Offensive Line Michal Menet Will Fries Phil Trautwein
Penn State football will welcome back Menet and his teammates June 15.

If that transition continues to go smoothly as players absorb the fine details, Penn State should have one of the better offensive lines in the Big Ten this coming season. The Nittany Lions return five players with starting experience, and they have a group of highly regarded prospects behind the projected first-teamers. Of the 10 linemen in Penn State’s projected two-deep this spring, eight received four-star ratings from Rivals.com. And there are five more linemen arriving in the Class of 2020 and two so far in the Class of 2021, including Rivals100 member Landon Tengwall.

Menet and Fries will have the most outsized roles in the line’s development this year – not just because they have amassed 58 career starts between them, but because they have helped new position coach Phil Trautwein quickly ingratiate himself with the program. Menet said that after meeting Trautwein in January, he knew right away it was going to be a good fit. That was a crucial step.

“I’ve been around for a little while, and I’ve kind of become one of the leaders in the room,” Menet said. “So it was very important for me. If I wasn’t bought in, I think it would have been a little bit harder for him to transition into coaching [at Penn State].

“But from the first second I started talking to him, I could tell I was going to like him. Before I even talked to him, I was excited that he had played in the NFL, he had that experience that he could bring to us. Not a lot of coaches bring that to the table, and I think that’s a huge plus. He’s played at the highest level, he knows from experience what works and what doesn’t. It’s pretty easy just talking to him and going through his techniques. I was bought in from the first second I talked to him.”

Trautwein, who spent four seasons in the NFL after an All-Southeastern Conference career at Florida, understood that Menet’s support would go a long way toward winning over the room and giving him the credibility he needed to begin putting his own stamp on the unit.

“Guys are looking at that, and it’s helping them buy into what I’m preaching,” Trautwein said. “For him to be that guy, it’s huge. If he didn’t believe in me, then I know it would be hard. So the first thing I did was to build relationships and make sure the older guys believed in me. When we talk about technique, he’s bought in. He knows what I’ve done before, and that what I’m showing them works.

“That’s what coaching is all about, getting them to buy in,” he added. “Other coaches out there have many different techniques, many different things. But at the end of the day, [if you’re] getting your offensive line to believe in what you do and how you do it, you’ll be successful. If there’s a coach out there who says, hey, just punch with one arm, and the offensive line believes in it, they would be the best one-arm punchers in the world. I don’t teach that; I teach two arms. But [it’s a matter of] getting them to believe in that, and Menet is one of those guys who has. He’s been buying in.”

Fries is another. The senior right tackle knew that Trautwein wanted his linemen to be violent with their hands, so he bought a heavy bag, set it up in his yard and sent his new coach a photo.

“That’s the mentality that I love,” Trautwein said. “That’s the mentality I want on my offensive line. The offensive line is all about development. It’s all about doing the little things that no one else wants to do, and I think Will has the mindset, which I think is going to help him in football and also later in life.”

Fries said Trautwein won him over right away with his attitude and approach to teaching. “Seeing his confidence, the way he carries himself, it was easy to buy in,” Fries said. “He’s done it at the highest level. I think that’s helpful, as well. But just knowing the kind of person he is now, it was an easy buy-in. I’ve learned a ton of stuff from him – technique stuff, becoming a higher-IQ football player, learning defenses better. It’s an ongoing process.”

One of Trautwein’s main points of emphasis is to make sure that his linemen are taking full advantage of their lower-body strength. Having a good base is critical, as is knee-bend. Trautwein will ask his players: Do you squat more or bench more?

“Most likely, you’re going to say you squat more,” he said, “so let’s get them to play on their legs, let’s get them to play on the insteps of their feet so that they’re always at maximum power. Being able to do that, to get them to feel that, to play on their legs – that takes a little bit of time. … Overall, they understand always being powerful, always being on your legs, stuff like that. It’s been a little bit of an adjustment.”

For now, Penn State’s linemen are still making those adjustments at home, preparing for their imminent return to campus for in-person, on-field coaching. That’s when they’ll really get to know their new coach and their new offense. For now, though, even though the circumstances have been far from ideal, players have acclimated to Trautwein’s way of doing business. And they’re already liking what they’re seeing.

“It’s not a huge transition,” Menet said, “because I was bought in from the first second. I just kind of thought of it as starting fresh, to be honest. No matter what he was going to tell me, I was going to do, because I believe in him. I believe in what he’s done and the experiences he’s had.”

Order your magazine subscription here!
Order your magazine subscription here!

Blue White Illustrated has put the finishing touches on our latest issue, mailed to our print subscribers and on newsstands regionally this week. Our annual magazine subscribers will receive their copies in the mail soon.

THE RUNDOWN:

THE BIG PICTURE - BWI editor Matt Herb details the accountability required throughout the program to deal with progressing physically and mentally in the absence of on-campus practices this spring.

PHIL'S CORNER - Blue White Illustrated publisher Phil Grosz examines the changes to the recruiting calendar that will have an inevitable effect on how this year's Class of 2021 ultimately plays out.

RECRUITING - As always, BWI recruiting analyst Ryan Snyder has your Penn State football recruiting fix, with assists from Matt and Dave Eckert. We've got Up Close and Personal features, 10 prospects to watch for the remainder of the Class of 2021, and more!

FOOTBALL - A pandemic may have created an abrupt disruption to football, but that hasn't stopped Penn State's players from moving ahead. Matt Herb and Nate Bauer have features on P.J. Mustipher, the offensive line story you just read, a look at defensive line coach John Scott, the Nittany Lions' burgeoning linebacker corps, Penn State's wide receivers and new coach Taylor Stubblefield,

These are just a few of the many stories and features that come with every edition of Blue White Illustrated's magazine! Be sure to order your print subscription here:

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Or, call our office during normal business hours at 1-800-282-1629.

For a complete yearly magazine subscription - 11 issues and 30+ BWI Xpress newsletters - click here!
For a complete yearly magazine subscription - 11 issues and 30+ BWI Xpress newsletters - click here!

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