Nittany Lions, Taylor Stubblefield focusing on development at wide receiver

The Nittany Lions’ best receiver will be playing in the NFL next season.

An elite talent, senior Jahan Dotson has outperformed even his preseason accolades by making 80 catches for 993 yards and nine touchdowns in 10 games for the Nittany Lions this year. He’ll have three more chances to build on it, too, with games against Rutgers, at Michigan State, and in a bowl before calling it a career at Penn State.

For second-year Penn State receivers coach Taylor Stubblefield, the question for 2022 is fairly straightforward:

Who’s next?

In a room that has had a heavy rotation featuring sophomores Parker Washington and KeAndre Lambert-Smith, their continued contributions and improvements will be assumed. Washington is second to Dotson in the room with 47 catches for 590 yards and two scores while Lambert-Smith has notched 28 catches for 419 yards and two touchdowns.

Beyond those three, however, the Nittany Lions’ receivers have a marked drop-off on the statistics page.

Fifth-year senior Cam Sullivan-Brown’s four catches for 44 yards have come as a product of playing in 10 games, followed by converted defensive back Marquis Wilson with three receptions for 29 yards in six games, and Malick Meiga’s two receptions over the past four games. 

Thursday afternoon, Stubblefield offered his assessments of Washington and Lambert-Smith in their second seasons of extensive play, as well as a progress report for some of the names and faces developing behind the scenes among the redshirt and true freshman classes.

Malick Meiga

An expected contributor for the Nittany Lions in his second year in the program, coming off a complete redshirt year in which he saw no game action in 2020, Meiga’s path started sidetracked.

Missing all of the Nittany Lions’ first six games of the season and preseason camp due to unspecified injury, Meiga made his first career appearance in the 20-18 overtime loss to Illinois on Oct. 23. In it, he saw just two reps, but the appearance would set the stage for an expanding role in every week since, including his first career catch at Maryland two weekends ago and another last Saturday against Michigan.

“The ceiling is extremely high,” Stubblefield said. “You got somebody who is very fast. He looks the part. He is quick. He’s an unbelievable person. Just an unbelievable person. He always has a smile on his face, always.. and is willing to do the extra work. 

“He had a couple of setbacks early on in the season and now he’s back full time and, shoot, you got to knock some rust off.”

In the process of knocking that rust off with two games remaining, Stubblefield said the progress made so far, and still to be made, will help Meiga continue to grow.

“He knows that he has to continue to get on the JUGS and work every possible catch that could be thrown at him so that he can continue to trust himself,” Stubblefield said. “But his ceiling is extremely high because of some of the physical and mental attributes that he has where he can be a deep ball threat, he can go up and get it. 

“And there’s still the adjustment of Canadian football and American football. He’s done a good job of adjusting, but they’re still all sometimes just the little movements that you might not have seen in Canadian football that you see an American football that he’s still adjusting to.”

Jaden Dottin

Meiga isn’t the Nittany Lions’ only second-year receiver.

An On3 Consensus four-star in the Class of 2020, 6-foot-2, 186-pound Dottin has made appearances in three games now in his career. First finishing Penn State’s 2020 campaign with four snaps against Illinois, Dottin also got two reps against Villanova and another at Iowa this season but has yet to make a career reception.

Said by Stubblefield in August to need more consistent reps, possibly an allusion to off-and-on injury through his career, the receivers coach reiterated the notion Thursday.

“They all develop at a little bit different pace. And yeah, I still would like for him to get some more consistency in terms of his reps and in terms of the stamina of the amount of reps that he takes,” Stubblefield said. “He had some bumps and bruises really throughout his career. Nothing major, just a bump here, a bump there. Some of it has come at times that have been at a period where it’s like, okay, you need to set the depth chart. You need to see who’s actually going to be in the depth chart. 

“And so, who’s going to be ready to actually play in the game? There’ve been some of those things that have maybe not gotten him as many reps as he would probably like.”

Those prior setbacks appear to have subsided however as the Nittany Lions approach the final few games of the 2021 season.

“I know as of late, he has done well. He has improved and he’s moved up on the depth chart as well,” Stubblefield said. “It’s a competitive environment here. It is a very competitive environment, and you have to bring it and be consistent every day.”

Harrison Wallace

Highlighted by head coach James Franklin for his preseason camp performance, Wallace again garnered a mention in a recent weekly radio show.

A standout basketball player at Pike Road in Montgomery, Ala., Wallace has continued through the path of development while focusing his concentration on just football this year. 

“We think very highly of Trey,” Stubblefield said. “He’s somebody who hasn’t played a lot of football, and so part of his process is being around the team so that next year, or the year after that, this isn’t his first time experiencing it. 

“Coach Franklin, he has a plan for everything. So yes, Harrison has not played really this year. But we want him to experience these things so that when he is put in a position to have a decent amount of playing time, he can handle it mentally and he can be prepared as best as he can.”

Listed at 6-foot-1, 190 pounds, Wallace is said by Franklin to have great ball skills as well as elite body control. And having accumulated additional reps due to some of the other setbacks that took place in the Nittany Lions’ receiving room in August, Stubblefield said the dividends are now being seen.

“Especially early on in camp when we had some setbacks and stuff, he was able to get a lot more reps, which was good for him.”

Liam Clifford

Though mentioned at times in the preseason alongside Wallace, the brother to quarterback Sean Clifford also has not seen the field yet for the Nittany Lions this season.

Depending on the type of game Penn State finds itself in against Rutgers Saturday afternoon, Stubblefield doesn’t necessarily expect that to change, either.

“Our priority is to win the game on Saturday, and we’re going to do that with whoever we need to do it with,” he said. “Those guys, they’re both summer enrollees. And so if you think about it, they’ve only been here for four months. There’s the offense you got to learn. You got to try to pick it up and all the nuances of it. 

“They are where they need to be in terms of, they’re getting the experience of learning the offense. They ran a little bit of developmental squad, so they’ve done a little bit of all of it throughout the last three or four months. These final however many weeks we have left, it’s going to be big for them. And then obviously the offseason and spring ball will be big for both of them.”