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Penn State football: Which position group has the most to prove this spring?

IMG_1698 5 (1)by:David Eckert•03/18/22•

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There will be a desire among many Penn State position groups this spring to show that 2021 won’t define them.

The Nittany Lions finished the season 7-6, a far cry from the 5-0 start which had fans targeting a New Years Six bowl game or maybe even a Big Ten title. Certainly, Penn State will want to use spring practice to wash away the lingering odor of the 2-6 stretch that came after the Nittany Lions’ bye week.

Ultimately, though, no position group has more to prove this spring than Penn State’s offensive line.

Penn State’s offensive line ranked in the bottom half of the Big Ten in both run blocking and pass blocking according to Pro Football Focus’s grades in 2021.

That’s not going to get it done.

While the opposing pass rush seemed to get to Sean Clifford more frequently toward the back end of the season, the primary issue for the Nittany Lions’ offensive line was the running game.

Penn State averaged 3.2 yards per carry last season and only 107.8 rushing yards per game. Both of those marks rank second from the bottom in the Big Ten, surpassed only by Purdue.

James Franklin frequently insisted that the entire offense shared that blame, noting that the Nittany Lion running backs weren’t necessarily pulling their weight all the time, either.

The arrival of five-star Nick Singleton could help in that area if he proves ready for Big Ten football as a true freshman. Still, improving the running game has to start with improvement up front.

Can the Penn State offensive line improve?

Losing Rasheed Walker, Eric Wilson and Mike Miranda, there are three starting spots that the Nittany Lions have to fill from last year’s already disappointing unit.

That’s a scary proposition, but the young players who emerged late in the season to fill in as needed — Landon Tengwall and Olu Fashanu — both played well enough in their cameos to give Penn State fans some encouragement.

“We have a lot of faith and confidence in him,” Penn State head coach James Franklin said of Fashanu before he started the Outback Bowl.

He expressed a similar sentiment regarding Tengwall when he filled in against Rutgers.

“We were very, very pleased and very impressed with him,” Franklin said. “There were a lot of moving parts that magnified it against a team that I think plays good defense and is physical and tough. We were very pleased with Landon.”  

There are eight offensive linemen on Penn State’s roster who were four-star prospects out of high school, according to the On3 Consensus.

That does not include JB Nelson, who is the top overall Junior College prospect in the Class of 2022. Nor does it account for Hunter Nourzad. He was a second-team All-American at the FCS level last season, and will join the Nittany Lions following his graduation from Cornell in May.

We know that stars are not always a perfect measure of talent. But certainly, there is more than enough pedigree within Phil Trautwein’s unit for Penn State’s offensive line to be better than what it showed a season ago.

For that reason, this unit has more to prove than any other Nittany Lion position group.

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