Penn State makes pair of special team starter changes before UCLA game

STATE COLLEGE — No. 7 Penn State will have a pair of new starters on special teams when it takes on UCLA to open the October portion of its schedule at Noon ET today inside of Beaver Stadium. The Nittany Lions will have new faces manning both the place kicking job and handling the punt returning duties.

Redshirt freshman Ryan Barker is now the starting placekicker. He replaces Sander Sahaydak, who is losing his job on field goals and extra points for the second year in a row. The redshirt junior missed two- 40-yard field goals in last weekend’s 21-7 win over Illinois. It brought his season field goal total to 2 of 5 on the year. He is 3 of 7 for his career. Sahaydak lost the job last year to Alex Felkins, who took over after two games. Barker is a walk-on who made his college debut last week when he kicked the game’s final extra point. A walk-on from Landenberg, Pa., he was a first-team All-State selection as a senior.

“Barker’s a stud,” Felkins told reporters in 2023. “He’s been doing really, really good this year. I’m excited to see what he ends up doing in his career. Obviously he’s young, he has some stuff to work on. You don’t really know how a guy is going to perform until he’s in that game situation, but I have 100 percent faith in him. He’s been really good in practice this year.”

Lions coach James Franklin was supportive of Sahaydak when asked about him in recent days. But, it’s clear that it was time to make a change.

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“Here’s a young man that’s come to Penn State; he has done everything right. He’s killing it academically. He’s done all the right things off the field. And he’s earned a starting job,” said Franklin. “A few years ago, he lost a starting job, battled all the way back from that, which is hard to do, and earns a starting job again. And then obviously, he’s had some struggles.

“But Sander is a part of our team, and we’re totally appreciative of him, and we’re going to need him at some point this year. And I would just ask all of the fans, the true fans out there, to support him because he’s done it the right way his entire time, and I couldn’t be more proud of him. And I got his back.”

Penn State forced to make a change at punt returner

Penn State listed punt returner and receiver Kaden Saunders as out on its pregame availability report. So, unlike at kicker, it is forced to make a change at punt returner. Sophomore cornerback Zion Tracy will take Saunders’ place. Why Saunders is out is unclear. But, it likely relates to the injury he’s been playing with since August.

“So Kaden suffered an injury during training camp,” Franklin said this week. “That’s why you guys see he hasn’t been playing much wide receiver, and we had anticipated him having a pretty big role for us on offense. So he had an injury, and early on we weren’t sure if he was going to be able to go, and then he got cleared and it was him getting confident back to being out there.

“Really the plan for the first couple games was to just have him catch the ball. We had a ton of confidence that he would catch the ball and predominantly fair catch the ball.”

Franklin also gave Tracy a vote of confidence this week.

“Zion Tracy is a guy that we think is close,” Franklin said. “As you guys know, he’s got a background from high school, not only a returner but also a wide receiver. And we were hoping that he would be the guy during that time and just hadn’t happened during practice. Right now, Zion is doing some really good things on defense and special teams and gaining a ton of confidence.”