Notebook: Ja'Juan Seider on his young backs, Journey Brown and recruiting

In the view of Penn State running backs coach Ja'Juan Seider, his running back room is now down a pair of players with NFL talent.

Noah Cain's week one injury put him out for the season, and now Journey Brown's football career has been put to an abrupt and unjust end by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, as Penn State announced last night

It leaves the onus on Seider to try to prepare Penn State's running back room for roles they could not have envisioned themselves playing as the Nittany Lions look to turn their season around.

"It's been tough," Seider said Thursday morning. "We are dealing with it, and we will, so don't make that excuse. That's part of life, but it ain't the NFL, and we can't go sign guys off the street, so we got what we got and we'll get better with them."

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Sophomore Devyn Ford, who saw a small smattering of carries last season and is suddenly the most experienced running back Penn State has, has been entrusted with the lion's share of the carries for Penn State through three games.

Caziah Holmes and Keyvone Lee, a pair of true freshmen, have carried the ball a combined 21 times so far as Seider looks to bring them up to speed.

For those two, Seider said, the biggest adjustment comes with the physicality of the game at the college level, and a level of concentration that might not have been necessary previously.

"You've got to be consistent," Seider said. "It starts with practice. Getting them to take a rep and make it game-like, because that's the area where you've got to see improvement, how to finish a run, when the whistle's blown, you don't stop, you continue to play.

"I think a lot of people don't understand, it's not just handing the football off. You've got to teach these kids situational football they never heard about, like a two-minute, a four-minute, a red zone, a low red zone, how to pick up a block — like I can't tiptoe, I got to meet that guy at the point of contact and the low man is going to win.

"The football terms have got to become second nature to them, it's like shooting a free throw. You shoot it over and over and over again, it becomes muscle memory for a free throw shooter, right? Same with playing this game of football, because right now you're not the best player on the field, so your details got to continue to take over."

Brown has been serving as an assistant running backs coach alongside Seider since his heart condition forced him to the sidelines.

Discussing Brown's future with the media Thursday, Seider said the priority remains keeping Brown on track to get his degree.

Seider said he doesn't want to force Brown into coaching long-term.

"I want this to be something that he wants to do," Seider said. "But I think the most important thing is to keep him engaged and doing stuff instead of sitting at home in an apartment and have that pity party, which is easy to do.

"Its trying to find the next phase in life, what it's going to look like. He's done a tremendous job helping young guys who were coming in here with the mindset of probably not playing, and trying to get them to understand what's the 'now' right now."

Seider and everyone else involved in recruiting at Penn State is set to be impacted, as reports suggest the NCAA's recruiting dead period will be extended until April 15.

"It's tough," Seider said. "It makes you be creative. It makes the whole recruiting department come up with new ideas, because you can't use that excuse because everybody's doing it. You've got to be creative in what you're doing, not getting stale, not getting bored."

Seider said he finds recruiting from afar particularly challenging because of the approach he takes.

"If I put my name on a kid, I've seen him. I want to see the adversity that kid goes through in practice and in the game how he responds," Seider said. "Highlight tapes are highlights. You can see a lot of great highlights when kids make plays. But I want to see when the game's tough, or the practice is tough. Does he rise to the occasion, or does he take a back seat? Because if he takes a back seat, it's going to happen on a big stage when we've got to play Ohio State, we've got to play Michigan in front of a 107,000 people home or away."

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