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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEAugust 4, 2018Ricky RahneUniversity Park, Pennsylvania Q. The offensive line for the last four seasons has been a point of contention and something you guys would like to see improvement on. How is it different this season compared to years past and how much will that impact the offense moving forward for you? COACH RICKY RAHNE: Well, I think the first thing I would say is, you know, we've had pretty good offenses over the last two years. There were five guys out there who were blocking, so I think that the perception of our offensive line is probably not accurate. When you finish in the Top-10 in the country in scoring, we understand that we have talented football players carrying the football and throwing it and things like that but there are guys who are opening up those holes and doing those sort of things. That being said, I think Coach Limegrover has done a terrific job building a culture in that room. And those guys, they come to work. They are very driven and they help each other. They are talking ball all the time and those sort of things while still being able to have fun. I'm really just looking forward to the consistency that those guys are going to bring, but also the competition within that room that are going to allow us to be better day-in and day-out, but also be better as the season progresses. Q. Can you describe how Miles Sanders has assumed the mantle so far? I know it's only one practice, but since spring practice. Also, what do you expect from him and the rest of the running backs this season? COACH RICKY RAHNE: I think the running backs are an extremely hard-working group. That's going to really help us out. They have done a nice job in pass protection and things like that, and Coach Seider is a very accomplished coach and he does a great job of teaching those guys, you know, just the little nuances of the game and big picture things and things like that. The one thing I've seen from miles that's changed is he's assumed a leadership role and that's been really, really good. I mean, he's a guy who has always been a little bit in the background for obvious reasons but I think he's stepped out and really gone into a leadership role. That's critical for our football team. We want as many leaders as you can possibly get. You can never have too many leaders. So guys that are going to be positive leaders on our football team and in our locker room, that's always going to be a good thing. Q. Two things on Trace. When you were watching him in high school and you were thinking about, okay, what could this kid's potential be? What were the things going through your mind at that point, and then seeing him develop, has he surprised you, blown away your expectations or could you have possibly conceived some of this a few years ago? COACH RICKY RAHNE: Well, I think any time that you recruit a player, you see him being a starter and a championship football player. I don't think he's necessarily exceeded my expectations or anything like that, just because I knew the type of person he was, the type of family he came from, and I watched him play a lot of games. He won a lot of football games in high school. You know, I know I went to his state semifinal game and his mom told me I couldn't comeback because he humbled three times and she was devastated and thought I would never recruit him again. But obviously that wasn't the case. No, he -- from the day he stepped on campus, he's been the same kid, very driven, very motivated. Great teammate. Great leader. So I've been ecstatic with him since the day he got here. Q. With all this notoriety and hype and Heisman talk, it was just a year Joe Moorhead said, it's asinine the perception that people have of Trace, that he just throws the ball up. How has he handled those components as he's gotten more notoriety? COACH RICKY RAHNE: He hasn't changed. I think probably the best person on the planet to ask that to is probably my nine-year-old son, Ryder. He couldn't tell you that Trace has changed one little bit, you know, since he's been six years old, till now. The kid is the exact same kid and that's what makes him great and that's what makes him who he is and what he is. And quite frankly, I think that's a culture that Coach Franklin builds around our team. You look at Saquon. Saquon didn't change. So I think that's just part of our team. These guys, we not only are able to recruit great football players, but great young men, as well. Q. When you look at the tight ends and kind of the development there, obviously you're limited in the spring. What are you hoping to see from a guy like Nick Bowers at this point in his career and getting it all together? COACH RICKY RAHNE: Yeah, I was -- I would say, first of all, they have had a major upgrade in coaching, so that's been a positive statement there. Coach Bowen is a great football coach, scheme and technique. That's been a great deal for us. But I told him the other day, we were sitting down talking, and it's always going to be hard to replace a guy like Mike. You watch the clips coming out of Dolphins camp right now and he's making all these one-handed catches and these guys are amazed. And I'm like, yeah, like I wrote on Twitter the other day, I don't know if that makes the top 20 I've seen. It's hard to replace that. Where I think I can replace that, though, is a group effort. Every single guy who went in there yesterday and as I can envision them going in there, I see productivity and I see guys who can play in the Big Ten. I think that we have a very high level tight end group and I'm very excited about it. Q. How do you keep your offense evolving with the loss of some of those playmakers? COACH RICKY RAHNE: Well, I think every year that's the beauty of college football and that's one of the reasons why I enjoy it so much and a lot of coaches do, is every year, the team changes. You're losing a quarter of your football team every single year. So your team is having to evolve all the time. You're going to constantly be playing to the strengths of your team. Coaches, we're not just sitting around in the off-season doing nothing, so defenses are going to change and adjust and adapt, so you're constantly trying to adjust and change and adapt and anticipate those changes in the future of what defenses are going to do to try to stop offenses like us all the time. We get the supreme advantage of going against Brent Pry every day, so I'm able to see a lot of different things and I'm able to see what the next big wave, big thing is going to be, with one of the best defensive -- if not the best defensive coordinator in the country. Q. You lost about 160 receptions and you have six receivers with four years of eligibility. What's the competition been like in that group? COACH RICKY RAHNE: It's been awesome and quite frankly, I saw a major step up from even spring practice yesterday with the receivers, the red-shirt freshmen receivers. I was extremely pleased with some of the things that KJ Hamler did and Mac Hippenhammer and Cam Sullivan-Brown. Those guys did some great things yesterday at practice. I was very, very, very happy about that. You know, I think that the great part about this offense is the ball goes where it's supposed to go. There's going to be a lot of different guys are going to make plays. You know, nine different guys touched the ball in the first 21 plays against Washington. So a lot of different people touched the ball, and able to keep the defense off-guard and it also keeps a lot of people involved. Q. How have the quarterbacks behind Trace and Tommy been developing, and how important is that with the fact that Tommy sees the field in other ways? COACH RICKY RAHNE: I think it's important for every player on our team to develop, and I don't mean to be aloof about that. Every single guy on our team needs to develop. So I was really extremely pleased with Sean Clifford. He approached the summer the way he should. He was very businesslike. He got bigger, faster, stronger, but based on what he did yesterday, and the questions he's been asking in meetings and things like that, he also took a very mental approach to the summer and made some major strides there, too, which I was very pleased about. Our freshmen, Will Levis, he's a very talented kid. Obviously once you make the jump from high school to college, that's a jump up in speed and things like that. But I told him yesterday, my first day playing college football, I was given the kicker balls to throw because me and my other fellow freshmen quarterbacks could not throw a spiral, and our quarterback coach did not want me quote unquote scuffing the balls, so he's already way, way ahead of me there. So we're on a positive trajectory. Q. What have you seen from DeAndre and Juwan in terms of leadership leading the young receivers? COACH RICKY RAHNE: Yeah, I think those guys, they need to step up and be leaders and I think Juwan is a very good leader. One of the things he does a great job with is leading by example, but also being able to take the young guys aside and being like, hey, you should have done this and you should have done that. The other thing that he does extremely well, is he's willing to admit when he makes mistakes. Yesterday he was like, I'm not sure I did that right and I was like, no, you didn't. But he was like, okay, great, what do I need to do. I said this. Next time we ran the play, a period later, he got it exactly right. He's able to take those corrections and move on. And those young guys seeing that, that's critical. That's a major component of leadership and that's something that's been ingrained in that room from the guys in the past from Chris God win to day Shaun Hamilton and then to Juwan. So I'm very excited about that component of it. Q. Another question about the offensive line. What do you expect to see in the competition for the five starting jobs and how many starters do you feel are going to be competing for this, these jobs, eight to ten possible starters? COACH RICKY RAHNE: That's the beauty, that's the thing I'm probably most excited about with the offensive line is we do have 8- to ten guys that I feel could go in the game and play Big Ten level football, and that's huge from where we were the first year we were here. So the recruiting aspect of it, the development that Coach Limegrover has done, the development Coach Galt has done in the weight room and things like that, the hard work those guys have put in, that's been great. I think that competition is going to breed success, and it's going to happen every day. Each guy knows, hey, if I don't bring my A Game today, you know, I may not get the reps that I need in order to be successful. If you look around the country, the programs that have type of competition at every position, those are the teams that are consistently year-in and year-out, competing for the playoffs and beyond. Q. Trace last week in Chicago discussed him being more involved with game planning this year, and I was just wondering, how did that come about? Did you broach it to him? Did he suggest it? And what can he offer when it comes to that, and how will it work? COACH RICKY RAHNE: Well, you know, him being graduated, he probably has a little bit more time on his hands, right. But no, I respect Trace, his football IQ, his football acumen, and his ability to understand this offense and see things that can help us win football games. There's going to be times when he says something and I'm going to tell him, hey, that's a great idea; I don't feel comfortable doing it for this, this and this. But I'm going to give him an explanation of why we are or aren't going to do it, and then there's some things I'm going to ask him. I'm going to say, hey, do you like this or this; or do you like this or this. That's always been the case with Trace -- there's going to be times where it's like, you know, hey, guys, this is a great third down play, the quarterback doesn't like it, we're not calling it. I understand it's going to be open. He doesn't like the way it feels and he doesn't like the way he sees it. That's out. Then there's going to be other times where a play that he really likes, maybe it doesn't fit as well as it needs to but it's going to be in the game plan and it's going to be called because you're always -- confidence is the hinge on the door to success and if you're confident on a play, then the possibilities are wide open. So right now, that's part of it. And I also, you know, another thing, he's earned that right. He's learned that right and there's a difference between somebody being given something and somebody earning it. There's probably -- there's very few players in the country, I would say, who have earned it, not only by their play on the field but their actions off the field and the work they put in than Trace McSorley. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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