Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki discusses progress after first week of spring football
Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki spoke with the media for ten minutes after practice on Tuesday night to shed some light on the team’s progress through he first week of spring camp. He talked about the team’s wide receiver position, how he teaches players, and his approach to incorporating the players’ feedback into the team’s plan. Check out his full comments on the Blue White Illustrated YouTube Channel, or embedded here in the article.
Highlights from his comments are below.
Penn State putting quarterbacks through the same drills as eligible receivers
Every offensive and defensive player goes through ball security and disruption drills at Penn State practice. Those drills are the steady diet of our practice window since the team opened practice to the media again after COVID.
However, a new wrinkle in the process is that the Penn State quarterbacks go through the same ball security drills as the rest of the running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends. During this portion of practice, Drew Allar, Beau Pribula, and the rest of the signal callers mix in with the tight ends now. Kotelnicki explains his reasoning for doing this.
“Coach Franklin and I have the same thoughts about ball security. It’s really, really important. If you touch the ball or you have the ability to carry the ball at some point, which our quarterbacks do, with our, everyone’s gonna learn how to take care of the football the right way. So they’ve done ball security in the past with those spots, but they may be done different drills, but we put right in there. One of our spring objectives is develop ball-carriers develop ball-carriers, develop ball-carriers.”
Emphasis on creativity
From our observations of Kotelnicki’s work at Kansas and Buffalo, he’s used players in unique ways to create advantages for his offense. On Tuesday, he hammered that point home.
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“And I mean this, as any player that can help us win games on our offense, we will find a way to utilize them,” He said. “We’ll find a way to put them on the field. I mean that. We’ll be as creative and unique as necessary to utilize our players.”
Kotelnick also reiterated his desire to teach and to help be an excellent communicator of football to his Penn State players.
“I want to stay on the cutting edge of anything that we’re doing in terms of teaching. So when we talk about any kind of quiz, either in person or either in person or maybe on paper, or online, it’s going to have to do with, you know, checking for understanding.
“I always want to ask and engage guys what they see, what they do, what they think. One thing that’s really prevalent, I think, nowadays is everyone’s access to information.”
