James Franklin provides an update on the guard spot entering preseason camp

Penn State football needs to bounce back after a rather down year by program standards. And in the Big Ten, everything starts up front — at the line of scrimmage. James Franklin knows that well, and knows he needs a better performance out of his offensive line this season.

The guard spots in particular will be key as the Nittany Lions face some turnover in that department heading into this season. At Big Ten Media Days last week, Franklin got a chance to speak with media, and discussed his team’s guard depth at length.

You can read his full comments on the OG competition below, where Franklin started out with a rather funny commentary about judging offensive lineman outside of the games:

“Yeah, again, it’s hard to tell because at that position you could look awesome running around in your T-shirt and underwear and it doesn’t matter, because there’s some guys that have been high-level offensive linemen in the NFL that don’t look great running around in their underwear.”

According to James Franklin, good offensive lineman don’t necessarily come with great bodies. However, he then listed off several names in reference to the amoung of depth Penn State has.

“I do think, again, from a depth standpoint there, there’s six guys and maybe more, but when you talk about [Landon] Tengwall, [Juice] Scruggs, [Sal] Wormley, who was going to be our starter last year going into the season before an injury, [Hunter] Nourzad who’s been super impressive since getting on campus, [Nick] Dawkins and JB Nelson, that’s a good group of guys to be able to work with and that doesn’t even count. Whether it’s[Ibrahim] Traore or [Golden Israel-Achumba]. And even [Bryce] Effner is a guy that people aren’t talking about. I think he’s a guy that could be a five-position player.

Franklin then harped on the amount of versatility among the offensive line as well.

“We have a number of offensive linemen that create flexibility and allow us to get the best guy on the field. We’re not a program that’s got like true, obvious tackles and true, obvious guards. We have a few of those guys, but a lot of them are guys that can play multiple positions. That’s really where you want to be.”