One of the crown jewels of Penn State's 2024 recruiting class, running back Quinton Martin has played in three of the Nittany Lions' first six games of the season.
The former high four-star prospect now has just one game remaining in the 2024 season in which he could play in before potentially burning his redshirt by playing in a potential fifth game. On Monday during his weekly press conference, Penn State head coach James Franklin was asked about Martin and how the Nittany Lions would potentially manage and use the talented true freshmen the remainder of the season.
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"So the way I would describe him right now, he's still a yellow, but he's a yellow where he understands and the coaches understand, if we have to play him to win games, we're going to do that," James Franklin said about the former four-star prospect. "Everybody is comfortable in doing that," he added.
"I would prefer to manage it as much as we possibly can so that we still have that flexibility and that choice moving forward, but at this stage we're still trying to preserve it and have flexibility come the end of the year," Franklin said about Martin's situation. Entering the season, the Nittany Lions had hopes they would potentially be able to preserve the redshirt of both true freshmen tailbacks in Quinton Martin and Corey Smith.
A long-term injury to Cam Wallace and star running back Nicholas Singleton dealing with bumps and bruises, however, has forced the Nittany Lions' hands in playing Martin.
"When Nick [Singleton] was working through some bumps and bruises, that made it more challenging to do that. Nothing has really changed from that standpoint at this stage."
That being said, if the Nittany Lions do ultimately burn Martin's redshirt, they want to be sure that they are using the true freshman to the best of their ability, which could be challenging considering the Nittany Lions' starting duo of Singleton and Kaytron Allen.
"He's done a good enough job that the coaches feel like this is a weekly conversation on what we want to do with him because I think if we did green light him, there are ways that we would take advantage of his skill set in a 21- personnel package," Franklin said.
"The challenge that I respond with that is every rep that we give him is a rep that we're taking away from Nick and Kaytron [Allen], and that's also something we're trying to manage as well as a coaching staff, and I know Ja'Juan [Seider] is specifically," he added.
"Early on in the season, there was conversations about ball distribution and things like that. It wasn't a whole lot of conversations about those two guys. When you have a third back that you're trying to factor in, if you are going to burn his redshirt, then you've got to play him. If you're going to play him, then that takes reps away from those other two guys. If those other two guys are healthy, I don't know if that makes a whole lot of sense at this stage."
"The young man is doing everything right at this stage. I think there's a ton of confidence in him and a ton of confidence in our coaching staff has in him as well. I think he has a ton of confidence in himself.:
Franklin also added that fellow true freshman Corey Smith is also developing well in his first season with the program.
"I actually think Corey [Smith] is coming on as well," he said. "I think he's a guy that we could look at a little bit like the defensive ends with Max [Granville] and [Jaylen] Harvey that I could see us maybe even possibly having Cory as the third back here at some point as well hopefully to preserve Quinton too."
Penn State and their talented room of running backs will return to action this Saturday in Madison against the Wisconsin Badgers.
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