James Franklin makes bold statement on difficult transition for young tight ends

Penn State has a pair of four-star true freshman tight ends coming in this season in Joey Schlaffer and Andrew Rappleyea. While the two are incredibly talented and could push for immediate playing time, Nittany Lion head coach James Franklin sees a long way to go for the two of them before he’s willing to rely heavily on a rookie out there at tight end.

As for why: Franklin claims that tight end may be the hardest position to learn as a college player coming from the high school ranks

“Yeah, I think it’s that position, you could make the argument, is probably the biggest transition, obviously taking quarterback out of it,” said Franklin when asked about his young tight ends recently. “I think you can make the argument tight end is probably the biggest transition for guys to make from high school to college.”

The key hurdle for young tight ends to clear is blocking. Per James Franklin, most of these receiving tight ends come in with very little idea of how to block at the college level.

“And the reason I say that is most high school tight ends never block, so they go from being big receivers to trying to block, you know. And and some of these guys are trying to do it when they should still be in high school and gym playing badminton or whatever it may be. So it is a challenge, it is growing pains.”

Franklin admits the younger tight ends may not have much fun in practice in the spring or preseason, but that’s the price of drilling the importance of blocking into his players’ heads.

“But we try to challenge these guys, because the reality is West Virginia won’t feel sorry for us if one of those guys are on the field. And they came here for a reason. So they’ll be way ahead come summer camp in the fall by going through it. But it’s not a whole lot of fun for them right now. It’s like they’ve been dropped on another planet.”

They were tossed right into the fire on the practice field, going from barely blocking high school athletes to lining up against Big Ten calibre defensive ends on day one of practice. Now, these tight ends just need to survive practice and get better as blockers and overall players every single day.