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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 3, 2019

Ricky Rahne

University Park, Pennsylvania

Q. How do you go about doing that --
COACH RICKY RAHNE: Quite a few people. I mean obviously there's a lot of guys I trust in this business, that I was able to talk to and do things like that. There's guys, all the way from guys in the NFL, other college coaches at numerous levels and even some high school guys.

I mean, so it's one of those things that any time I had an opportunity to sit down and talk ball with somebody, I was going to do it, you know and we had a chance when we go recruiting, obviously we recruit the best players in the country and they usually come from extremely successful programs.

I didn't drop in and drop out; I talk ball with those guys and a lot of times it might have been just philosophy and things like that. Did a number of things like that. Read a couple books. Did some things like that, too, and quite frankly, at some point, you need to stop and organize all those thoughts and make sure that you've got them going in the right direction.

So feel really good about where our offensive staff is and where our offensive plan is, and the players had an extremely good summer, so you know, really excited about where we're going right now.

Q. You guys took some heat last year on the offensive line. How is that going this year? Where do you think those guys are at?
COACH RICKY RAHNE: I think they are in a really good spot. Coach Limegrover did kind of the same thing. We are always going to re-evvaluate the ways we are teaching things and things like that, and he was able to do that, and I think our guys have really taken to the slight modifications that he was able to make. Excited about the way they look right now. Obviously we don't get to see them in pads or do anything over the summer, but the way they look, the look in their eyes, just the way they are even in the jog-throughs and things like that, the way they are seeing things and the communication they have been making has been great.

Really excited about those guys. We have guys like Gonzalez who has played a tremendous amount of football, Will Fries, Michal Menet, now a whole season under his belt, that's going to be huge for us, C.J. Thorpe, Miranda, Walker, Des Holmes, those guys, experience in practice is going to be huge.

Just excited that those guys, the way they are approaching it and the whole team in general, the mind-set they have gone into this off-season with.

Q. Piggyback off that, were there specific areas where you felt you did improve or needed to improve in the off-season from year one to year two?
COACH RICKY RAHNE: There's obviously plays that you're going to look at that are -- that you wish you would have called something else and sometimes they are ones that you guys may notice and sometimes they are not. But I think that the main thing for me is going in there, and sometimes it's just mentality and presentation to the offensive players and the offensive staff. I think sometimes that can be a huge part of it. I think the more research I've done on a lot of things, it's about presentation and mentality and those things are two things that you know, you're always working on, always striving on.

It's one thing that Coach Franklin does an unbelievable job on and so I'm lucky enough to be able to learn from him. You know, we have got to be able to go in there, make sure our kids believe in everything that we are saying, and they are going to believe in it because it's well prepared.

Q. Can you speak to the differences and the similarities between this quarterback competition and the one a few years ago between Trace and Tommy?
COACH RICKY RAHNE: Yeah. I mean, obviously there's a lot of similarities to it. You know, we were trying to replace a guy that had played a lot of ball for us, and we're going with guys who had not played as much, right and were fairly quote, unquote, inexperienced. But they were both very talented and very competitive.

I think that's what we have here, two smart guys who are very competitive. They are very good friends so they help each other, which I think is incredibly important. We had a quote up today that "we always supersedes me," and those guys, they really buy into that. It's still about the quarterback position playing well, not about fighting each other and making sure that our quarterback position can play well, because ultimately, they are the leader of the offense and where that leadership takes us is how far we're going to go.

Q. You waited a long time to be offensive coordinator and I know it was something that was a dream of yours. What did you learn about yourself in year one that you can apply to year two?
COACH RICKY RAHNE: You know, I think the thing that as a general rule, a lot of us, we get to more and more is better and better, right. So if you're struggling with anything, the answer immediately is I'm going to work harder, I'm going to work more, I'm going to stay later, I'm going to do that.

I've realized that that's not the better answer. It's working more efficiently. It's making sure that you're making decisions quickly and accurately and those sort of things, and I think that's something that's really going to help me in the future.

You know, my natural instinct is just to work harder, and that can't always be the way, right. There's only so much blood in the stone. You have to make sure that you get your sleep and those sort of things and quite frankly, I've made goals for myself on that this year.

Q. What you remember is 20 years ago at Cornell when you were a first-time college quarterback, granted, not the same level as here, but what surprised you about being a college quarterback for the first time?
COACH RICKY RAHNE: What surprised me? Well, what surprised me first of all was my coach was pretty big at running the ball and the very first play was a pass, so that was fairly surprising and he let me throw the ball a lot that day, so that was also fairly surprising.

But the speed of the game, right. You know, just like our freshmen are going to have to adjust to the speed of the game, it's all relative. I learned early that day that when you throw an interception, you don't have to go try to beat Ronnie Lott after him, because he's probably bigger and tougher than you -- yeah, good times, good to remember that. (Laughter).

But you're going to learn something all the time. I learned something, you know, my college quarterback coach, who was an offensive coordinate in the NFL recently, was up recently, Bill Lazier, he's a great guy and we talked about some of those things, you know.

It's amazing; to me it doesn't feel that long ago but then I look at pictures and it's significantly long ago, and especially with the haircut I had and the nonsense like that. It's amazing how that level of football, you know, you think about it, how big of changes there are but how everything stays the same. It's still always going to be about blocking and tackling in football, and being able to create the best angles on blocks and get your guys in space to make harder tackles, that's what it's always going to be about. It was about that then and it will be about that forever.

Q. Curious what you've seen from the addition of Coach Parker with the receivers, and additionally, the transfer addition with Weston Carr, how involved were you with getting him on board and what does he bring as clearly one of, far and away, one of the older guys in that group?
COACH RICKY RAHNE: For Coach Parker, start with he's just a tremendous person and I think that's a huge part of it because these guys trust him and he knows that they care -- he cares about them and quite frankly, it goes both ways. They care a lot about him and his family. That's a huge part of it.

He's a great coach. He knows how to simplify things, very complicated things and he knows how to simplify it so that he can teach it fast and teach it consistently. Really excited about the way he teaches and what he brings to practice and all those sorts of things.

In terms of Weston, our whole offensive staff, we recruit together. We were all very involved in that. The amount of places, you know, the amount of football he's played at the college level is big, whatever level it's at, it's still big in the production he's been able to have. We're excited about what he can bring. His size, he's very smooth and that sort of thing. He brings a different level than anybody some of our other guys.

Q. With Trace you knew what you had, but replacing the quarterback, do you find it exciting, maybe a little challenging trying to develop a certain set of plays to bring out their best skills in the first year?
COACH RICKY RAHNE: Both, a challenge is exciting. There's going to be a challenge is exciting. I got a text message from a son today about how he just got Madden 2020 and he had the Steelers and he won 109 over the Bengals and I said, you might want to turn up the difficulty there. (Laughter) you know, his mom is patting him on the back. I'm like, hey, how about we crank it up a little there. I told him, having a challenge is exciting. That's what makes life exciting is a challenge. You walk through life and everything is handed to you, that's not exciting and that's not rewarding.

So obviously, being around a guy like Trace and watching his development over five years was rewarding, but being able to coach guys like Clifford and Levis and the two young guys, Michael Johnson junior and Taquon and being around a guy like Michael Shuster who provides an unbelievable amount of value in that room, it's extremely rewarding every day I'm in there and those guys are very coachable and quite frankly, it been a lot of fun. FastScripts by ASAP Sports ...

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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