News & Notes: Recapping PSU's Season Opener vs. Idaho

From the jump Saturday, my mind went back to my first interview with new Penn State special teams coordinator Joe Lorig.

Sitting down for a 20-minute Q&A in the first days of June, Lorig was running through his media obligations and getting his assistants and players prepared for the ensuing weeks of summer workouts. The man tasked with reversing a miserable 2018 season for Penn State’s special teams, Lorig wasn’t necessarily relaxed, but his confidence about the Nittany Lions’ upcoming year was unmistakable.

And from the moment Jordan Stout booted his first kickoff into the end zone, that confidence appeared well-placed. Welcoming Stout, a former walk-on at Virginia Tech who finished as one of the nation’s best kickoff specialists as a true freshman before transferring to Penn State this summer, the Nittany Lions now had a weapon of sneaky significance.

“We've added a piece that we can now compete, absolutely. We'll have the best kicker in the country and the best punter in the country and one of the best returners in the country,” said Lorig. “A lot of people don't realize. They think special teams are about the team, and they are about the team. However, if you don't have a punter, a kicker, a snapper, and a returner, the rest doesn't matter. I'm being literal. Obviously, it matters, but a lot of people think, we got a bunch of good players and we have just an okay kicker. Well, that doesn't work.

“How high that ball goes, how many touchbacks that guy has, how many go out of bounds. That stuff is all going to be a major, major factor. You can have 10 trained killers and if your kicker isn't good, you're not going to be good. So as a special teams guy, I know that.

“Can we win a championship? As long as we have a great punter, check, great kicker, check, great field goal guy, check, great returner, check, absolutely.”

Look at the statistics Saturday.

Stout booted 13 kickoffs against Idaho. None were returned, putting the Vandals at the 25-yard line to start 13 of their 17 possessions. Only one kickoff didn’t reach the end zone, which resulted in a fair catch anyway, and at least half sailed through the back of the end zone.

At least twice, Stout’s kickoff nailed a photographer and on another, pegged a security guard in the back.

How Stout’s presence affects this team’s win/loss record this season will be hard to quantify, but there is little doubt that, for a defense that appears every bit as talented as its preseason hype, eliminating the very possibility of an opponent’s kickoff return game should be a major boon.

This, of course, is to say nothing of his 53-yard field goal in the first quarter, good for sixth-longest in Penn State history.

“I remember on the headset coaches were talking about Chisena being tired because he was on four special teams units,” said head coach James Franklin afterward. “I said, “What about [Jordan] Stout’s leg?” He had a really good game for us.”

Stout, of course, wasn’t the only piece from which to glean some information Saturday.

Let’s take a look at some of the other things that stood out:

1) Penn State’s quarterbacks are going to run the ball this season.

Certainly, Penn State left plenty of hints this summer that Sean Clifford would likely win the starting position for the 2019 season. But the hint that proved to be more important, and was demonstrated by both Clifford and Will Levis Saturday, was the reality that these guys are not going to be a huge departure from Trace McSorley or even Tommy Stevens when it comes to the dynamic of running the ball from the position.

Take Dwight Galt’s comments from July’s Lift for Life event and apply them to Saturday.

“These guys have running back tendencies, so we've gotta make sure that not only are we keeping a really good amount of flexibility and stability in his shoulder for the throwing mechanics, but we also gotta make sure that they can take hits because we need Sean to take off a little bit this year,” said Galt. “He's really worked hard on that. He's embraced that and done a really nice job of getting not only his core section but his upper body in a really, really good situation. Speed-wise, he's a really good athlete. He's a very, very good athlete, and he's bigger. He's about 215 right now. He's a bigger guy, Trace was about 198, something like that, so he's a bigger, stronger kid. And it took me a little bit to kind of match up his ability to really exert horizontal force into the ground at his size, but he just works so hard.”

Yes, the opponent was Idaho, of which significant deficiencies helped pad stat lines throughout the day. But in Clifford’s 7 carries for 57 yards, and Levis’ 5 carries for 21 yards, the Nittany Lions had a pair of signal-callers that both looked comfortable taking off when necessary and, in Levis’ case, delivering some hits of his own.

2) Speaking of Idaho’s defense, for as lackluster as its rush defense was, its pass defense was worse. And in that vein, trying to pull much out of Clifford’s 14-of-23, 280-yard day is going to prove to be a bit of a challenge. The two touchdowns, both to KJ Hamler, were good reads - the first a beautiful step-up in the pocket to hit Hamler in stride, the second a bit behind. But the majority of Clifford’s completions were to targets that could have swung a driver without coming close to connecting with their defenders.

3) Don’t look now, but Penn State has a stable of running backs that all offer pretty enticing attributes.

And, on the eye-test attributes, I suspect it’d be challenging to pick one above any of the others. Of course, that’s not how the position works, Penn State relying significantly on its backs in pass protection, a factor that Franklin praised in his postgame press conference.

“I thought that Sean was pretty comfortable in the pocket most of the night and that our offensive line was playing really well, but that is also an area where young backs could miss a blitz pickup or whatever it may be. I thought that they played well from that perspective,” said Franklin. “Had a few new wrinkles to get the running backs involved in the passing game, but they did a good job with that too so overall, I think really good.”

I was most impressed by Journey Brown’s 23-yard touchdown carry that opened Penn State’s touchdown barrage in the first quarter for his patience, decisiveness hitting the hole, and what I can only describe as his smoothness carrying the ball.

But like Nick Eury’s brutal, game-capping, 8-yard touchdown, I was also quite impressed by the willingness of every back to take on contact and simply fight to pick up the 4- and 5-yard carries that are critical to staying on schedule. Keep those attributes against better opponents this season, and the Nittany Lions’ offense will be in business.