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psu football

By Derek Levarse dlevarse@timesleader.com
Sports Reporter
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Soon, the company line will kick in. By the time preseason camp opens in the summer, the only team Penn State will acknowledge exists on its schedule will be Youngstown State.

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Quarterback Paul Jones gets past Cody Caster during the Blue and White game last week.

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Penn State quarterback Matt McGloin, a West Scranton High graduate, looks for a receiver during the Blue and White game at Beaver Stadium in State College last week. McGloin, along with fellow underclassmen Paul Jones and Kevin Newsome, are under consideration for the starting quarterback position.

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That would be the Penguins of FCS, whom the Nittany Lions will open the 2010 campaign against on Sept. 4.

But now, at the end of spring ball, one can still hear schools like Alabama mentioned by coaches and players.

In the case of Jay Paterno, those schools have been on his mind because of his quarterbacks.

The Lions QB coach said this spring has been his biggest challenge in trying to get his charges ready for the season. Part of that is because the three scholarship signal-callers he has right now – Kevin Newsome (true sophomore), Matt McGloin (redshirt sophomore) and Paul Jones (true freshman) – are underclassmen.

And the other part is that Penn State will have one of the toughest schedules in the country, including a Week 2 trip to play defending national champion Alabama and a Big Ten opener on the road against nemesis Iowa in Week 5. Not to mention a November showdown with conference king Ohio State in Columbus.

With that in mind, the coaching staff is trying to dramatically accelerate the learning process.

“Well, it’s gonna get thrown at them pretty quickly, so we figured we may as well simulate what we’re gonna see,” Jay Paterno said. “It’s not like we’re gonna play (these teams) in the first month and they’re gonna go, ‘Oh, well we feel bad for Penn State because they have young quarterbacks.’ They may see blood in the water and come after us. And we’ve gotta be ready.”

That means throwing the ball much more often in the spring.

With the team taking it easy on fifth-year tailback Evan Royster in the past month, not wanting to risk an injury to the focal point of the 2010 offense, the Lions took the opportunity to hit the quarterbacks with as much as possible.

“We’ve pushed them really hard,” Jay Paterno said. “We threw the ball more this spring than we’ve thrown in any spring in the last 10 years. We sort of pushed them with the idea that we don’t have time to say, ‘OK, you’re a sophomore, you’re a freshman – let’s be safe. We’re gonna throw it, and we’re gonna challenge you, and you’re gonna get hit, and you’re gonna continue to throw it and you’re gonna get hit.’

“So we’ve actually set the bar as high as we would for (upperclassmen). We’ve tried to give them more reps, more of the pounding they’re gonna to take in a game.”

Before the spring, there was some internal debate amongst the coaches about how to handle the situation. While Penn State has had plenty of quarterback competitions in the past, typically the candidates have been in the program longer than one or two years.

According to Jay Paterno, the initial feeling was to ease the players into things and try to build some confidence in them before giving them the full workload.

“You’d like to have that luxury, but you don’t just because of the way the schedule sets up this year,” Jay Paterno said. “We can’t spend a lot of time trying to say, ‘Well, you’re only a freshman.’ Because the teams we play don’t care whether it’s a freshman, sophomore, junior – whatever they are – they don’t care. They’re gonna come after him.”

The Lions are hopeful that trying a different method now will pay dividends in September and beyond.

“I think we’ve made progress, I really do,” coach Joe Paterno said of his quarterbacks. “We’re not there yet. We’ve got a long ways to go. But they’re making progress, and they’re working at it, and there’s certainly some potential there. We’ll see what happens.

“But if you said to me, ‘Who’s gonna be starting quarterback in the fall?’ I couldn’t tell you.”