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Gerad Parker’s second game as a head coach came against James Franklin and Penn State.

On Thursday, he officially joined Franklin’s staff as the Nittany Lions’ new wide receivers coach.

Parker, who served as the interim boss at Purdue for the second half of the 2016 season, comes to Happy Valley after spending the last two seasons at Duke, where he was also the receivers coach this past fall.

“I am extremely humbled and honored to have the chance to join the Penn State football program,” Parker said in a school release. “I am so thankful to coach James Franklin and the entire coaching staff. We as a family are certainly very excited to be a part of a place that has been built with such a passion for football and with such a storied history.

“Coach Franklin has done great things at Penn State and has high expectations of where this program can go. Personally, I feel I have been called on this earth to coach wideouts and help grow men. What better place to do that than Penn State, a place that is high in talent and has a chance to compete for championships.”

It’s a smoother start than his predecessor, David Corley, who was initially hired to coach running backs but was shifted to wide receivers two weeks later when Franklin brought Ja’Juan Seider on staff from Florida. Corley was fired on Jan. 2, a day after the Lions closed their seasons with a loss to Kentucky in the Citrus Bowl.

Parker, 38, played for the Wildcats himself after a record-breaking high school career at Lawrence County High School in Louisa, Ky. He began his coaching career in 2007 and has since worked in college for Tennessee-Martin (running backs, 2008; wide receivers, 2009-10), Marshall (wide receivers 2011-12) — where Seider was also on staff at the time — and then Purdue, where he worked from 2013-16.

With the Boilermakers, he coached tight ends in 2013 and 2014 and wide receivers in 2015 and 2016, ultimately being elevated to interim head coach when Darrell Hazell was fired midway through that 2016 season. His second game was against a resurgent Penn State squad that had just upset Ohio State the week before. The game was close at the half before the Lions blew things open for a 62-24 win.

Parker went 0-6 at the helm of the Boilers. But the Lions aren’t asking him to run a program.

“We are excited to add Gerad to our staff,” Franklin said. “He has a comprehensive background and knows the Big Ten. He is a terrific fit for our staff, university and community. He has a great opportunity to come in and make a significant impact both on and off the field with a very talented position group.

“Gerad played wide receiver in the SEC and has shown he is a great teacher of the position, as well. His wide receiver groups have been able to overachieve throughout his coaching career.”

Parker inherits a group that’s high on talent but needs a boost of confidence after a season plagued by dropped passes and a general lack of cohesion with now-departed quarterback Trace McSorley.

With a new starting quarterback and a new position coach, the unit is hoping for a clean slate. And there’s plenty to work with. Of the nine scholarship wideouts in line to be on the roster in 2019, six were four-star recruits — seniors Juwan Johnson and Brandon Polk; sophomores KJ Hamler and Jahan Dotson; and freshmen Daniel George and John Dunmore, with Dunmore set to arrive in the summer.

A seventh, redshirt freshman Justin Shorter, was a five-star prospect and was rated as the nation’s top receiver in the 2018 signing class.

Last season at Duke, the wide receivers combined for 2,252 yards for 70.4 percent of the Blue Devils’ passing production while working with NFL-bound quarterback Daniel Jones.

Penn State wideouts, by comparison, finished with 1,884 yards last season for 66.5 percent of the Lions total passing yards.

Parker will be put to work quickly as the Lions were looking to add another receiver to the 2019 class along with Dunmore back in the December signing period and will look at their options again for the February window.

On top of that, he’ll be asked to quickly get involved with Southern Columbia junior Julian Fleming, the country’s top-ranked receiver recruit for 2020 who has been a frequent visitor at Penn State.

But Parker will also have a non-football issue to resolve in the coming days.

Parker was not retained at Purdue when Jeff Brohm took over at the start of 2017. A month later, Parker was charged with a misdemeanor in Indiana for operating a vehicle with a blood alcohol content between .08 and .15 on Feb. 21, 2017.

His jury trial has been pushed back multiple times and, as of Thursday evening, was scheduled for Jan. 17 — a week after his hiring at Penn State — according to Indiana court records.

Parker had originally been slated to work as a running backs coach at Cincinnati in 2017 before a wide receivers job opened for him at ECU. But the criminal charge closed that door for him, leading him to resurface as an operations assistant on offense at Duke that June.

Blue Devils coach David Cutcliffe defended Parker’s hiring at the time and then promoted him to receivers coach for 2018.

“Everybody has made mistakes,” Cutcliffe told The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C. “This is one I felt very strongly about. This was an outlier. There are trends. There are people that have issues. He’s not one of those. I have zero concern. I know he’s comfortable with it, and I’m comfortable with it, that as we move forward that will not be any issue whatsoever.”

Gattis to Michigan

Shortly after Penn State announced its new receivers coach, a former Lions receivers coach received a promotion to return to the Big Ten.

Josh Gattis, who left the Lions for Alabama last January, was hired Thursday to be Jim Harbaugh’s new offensive coordinator at Michigan, where Gattis will take over play-caling duties.

“It is an honor and a privilege to join the University of Michigan football family under Coach Harbaugh, one of the most successful head coaches in all of football,” Gattis said in a school release. “I am deeply humbled by the opportunity to serve as your offensive coordinator. This is the leadership challenge I’ve coveted. The football tradition at the University of Michigan is among the very best in college athletics. My family and I couldn’t be more excited to arrive in Ann Arbor.”

It will no doubt be a situation Penn State fans will keep an eye on, as Gattis left for the Crimson Tide shortly after Franklin promoted Ricky Rahne to offensive coordinator a year ago.

Gattis was listed as co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach at Alabama. Reports earlier Thursday indicated that Gattis would follow Mike Locksley from Alabama to Maryland, where Locksley has taken over as head coach.

Gerad Parker, shown here as Purdue’s interim head coach in a game against Penn State in 2016, joined the Nittany Lions staff on Thursday as the new wide receivers coach.
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/web1_AP_16303648084104.jpg.optimal.jpgGerad Parker, shown here as Purdue’s interim head coach in a game against Penn State in 2016, joined the Nittany Lions staff on Thursday as the new wide receivers coach. Michael Conroy | AP file photo

By Derek Levarse

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