{"id":18276,"date":"2023-10-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-01T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/?p=18276"},"modified":"2023-10-01T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-01T17:00:00","slug":"penn-state-sunday-situation-lions-5-0-start-will-only-mean-what-they-make-of-it-moving-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/penn-state-sunday-situation-lions-5-0-start-will-only-mean-what-they-make-of-it-moving-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn State Sunday situation: Lions\u2019 5-0 start will only mean what they make of it moving forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evanston, Ill. \u2014 <\/strong>Penn State is 5-0 for the fifth time in the James Franklin<\/a><\/strong> era. The Nittany Lions blasted Northwestern<\/a><\/strong> 43-13 on Saturday at Ryan Field. Coordinator Mike Yurcich\u2019s offense eclipsed the 30-point mark for the 13th straight game, which leads the nation. Second-year coordinator Manny Diaz\u2019s defense held its fifth straight opponents to 15 points or less and gave up fewer than 100 rushing yards for the fourth time in 2023. What\u2019s scary for future opponents is that Penn State is doing this despite not firing on all cylinders.<\/p>\n

What Franklin, his staff, and players have accomplished so far is impressive. What comes next is what matters, though. Penn State was 5-0 in 2021 and 2022 before dropping game six. That won\u2019t happen this time around, what with massive underdog Massachusetts coming to town on Oct. 14 following a bye week. But, it goes without saying that how the team improves during what Franklin called a bye not off week will go a long way in determining how far this team goes, or does not go, in 2023.<\/p>\n

Changing up the bye week approach<\/h2>\n

Franklin has tweaked plenty of things during his 10-year tenure in State College. One of them is how his team approaches a bye week. It is massively important for the current and future state of the program, of course. Key players get needed rest and recovery time. Reserves and young players earn valuable developmental reps. And recruiting is mixed in, too. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that we studied in great detail was bye weeks, and what is the best way to handle it so that you can find that balance between recovery and getting the guys fresh, but also getting better?\u201d Franklin said. \u201cThis is a bye week. Not an off week. We got to get better this week, and that\u2019s the fine line, right? What can we do during the week to allow the guys to recover? <\/p>\n

More: Penn State coach James Franklin comments on injured Lions Kaytron Allen, JB Nelson<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

\u201cThe [bye] weekend will be huge, especially if it\u2019s handled the right way. And then obviously being able to dig into our self scout, offense, defense and special teams, and then as I won\u2019t talk about, but we\u2019re also going to get ahead. The coaches will get ahead on the schedule as well during this by week. But, next week will be totally, obviously, on our next opponent. So those those are the things that we\u2019re looking at pretty hard, pretty heavy. I think some of the positions that Pat [Kraft] has allowed us to hire has helped with that as well. We just got more people to do more things.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s talking about analysts, of course. The group, which now totals 12, works on diagnosing Penn State\u2019s flaws and finding those of future opponents, among many other things. They will be tasked, as will the rest of the coaching staff, with fixing problems from the first five weeks. The players are too, of course.<\/p>\n

Penn State has something to build on<\/h2>\n

A college football team cannot go undefeated without being perfect before its bye week. But, if it wastes the time without a game, it\u2019s likely to end up on the wrong side of a contest sooner rather than later. To a man, Penn State players who spoke after the Northwestern win said the Lions are looking forward to building on what they started rather than being satisfied with what they accomplished so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a whole season left,\u201d defensive lineman Adisa Isaac said. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s only the start. It\u2019s only five games. So, we got we got bigger goals to get to. It\u2019s just the start, it\u2019s just a warm up. We just have to build off of it and keep going.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look at all the mistakes. Even though we won and it seemed like a good game in the second half, people made mistakes. There\u2019s a lot of a missed assigments that need to be corrected. And there\u2019s a lot of times where you make MAs and they don\u2019t get caught. They kind of missed this look, or something like that. So, just cleaning up on the back end, and the little small details, is really going to help us be a more complete defense moving on tougher opponents later in the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

More: Penn State \u2018Swiss Army Knife\u2019 shines in Northwestern win<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

Added Penn State receiver KeAndre Lambert-Smith<\/a><\/strong>: <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t get complacent. We need to use this off week as a time to prepare for the next opponent and take care of our bodies, because we\u2019re going into a stretch of the year where it\u2019s going to be pretty tough. So, just taking care of our body and watching more film, building more chemistry, doing all the little things to getting that edge over an opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n

If all of that happens, Penn State will be better for it moving forward. <\/p>\n

The post Penn State Sunday situation: Lions\u2019 5-0 start will only mean what they make of it moving forward<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evanston, Ill. \u2014 Penn State is 5-0 for the fifth time in the James Franklin…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}