James Franklin discusses brothers Sean and Liam Clifford

Penn State head coach James Franklin has coached sets of brothers before; that’s nothing new to him. But a combination like Sean and Liam Clifford? That’s a unique circumstance.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a quarterback-wide receiver [set of brothers],” Franklin said during an Aug. 12 press conference.

Sean, a fifth-year senior, has started 20 games at quarterback in his Penn State career, and figures to be the Nittany Lions’ starter for the entirety of 2021. This season, he’ll be joined on the roster by Liam, his younger brother, who enters the program as a true freshman wide receiver.

While Franklin has never had a set quite like this, he hasn’t gotten the chance to see the brothers in action; that’s in large part because their experience levels have separated themselves on the depth chart.

“Liam is not really getting reps with Sean and the [first team],” Franklin said, “so I haven’t really had a chance to see that.”

Franklin hasn’t seen the duo take the field together all too much, but he says that Liam, a three-star prospect out of Ohio’s St. Xavier, already entered the program a leg-up from the other freshmen — both mentally and physically — thanks to his older brother.

“Liam, as you can imagine, he’s probably further ahead than most freshmen just based on the conversations that he’s had with his older brother about college football, about Penn State, about the offense and understanding what it was going to take from a training perspective, from a running perspective,” Franklin said. “He killed the conditioning test the first time because — again — he’s got an older brother that’s going to tell him the real deal and how it goes.”

Franklin continued to sing high praise for Liam, who is in excellent physical condition despite being towards the bottom of the depth chart. The Nittany Lions’ head coach then took it a step further, suggesting that Liam could be an option at special teams as a true freshman thanks to his preparation.

“One of the things we’re going to talk about here pretty soon is what players would be willing to burn a redshirt for a special teams role,” he said. “And that starts to help us get an idea of guys that maybe we can get some reps on special teams early on, while their offense and defense roles grow.”