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Penn State spring practice notes and observations: Inside the Den

nate-mug-10.12.14by:Nate Bauer•04/13/22•

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Parker Washington was among the punt return options for the Nittany Lions on Wednesday afternoon. (Greg Pickel/BWI)

The Penn State football program was back at it Wednesday afternoon.

And, for the first time since the Nittany Lions opened their spring work, they were back outside. Spending each of the past three weeks inside Holuba Hall due to precipitation and poor weather conditions, the trend finally changed Wednesday.

Well, for a moment, anyway.

Just as the media exited after about 20 minutes of taking in special teams work, two-point conversions, and a little bit of individual positional drilling, the skies turned ominous. And, within 10 minutes, it was raining again.

As the Blue-White game gets closer, set for April 23 after a two-year hiatus from being completely open to the general public, what is the Penn State program working on?

Blue White Illustrated’s entire team of reporters – Nate Bauer, Greg Pickel, T. Frank Carr, Dave Eckert, and Ryan Snyder – were all on hand to glean as much information as possible from the snippet of practice open Wednesday afternoon.

Here’s a snapshot of what stood out at the beginning of practice:

Penn State practice notes

1) When we started in on practice, Penn State had three situations going on. The bulk of the team was working special teams punt, both coverage and return. The offensive line and defensive line, meanwhile, were broken off into separate groups at opposite corners of the outdoor practice facility.

A few things of note from the punt reps:

– Fordham transfer punter Barney Amor appears to me to be ahead walk-on Gabriel Nwosu, the 6-6, 278 pounder. They both have leg, but Amor seems to get the punt off more quickly and, to my eye (paying attention) appeared to have a little better hang time. These things are impossible to gauge in brief snippets of practice like we see, but that appeared to be the playing order (and there’s only two punters on the roster this spring). 

– Johnny Dixon was the first gunner with the first rep that we saw. Returners included Kaden Saunders and KeAndre Lambert-Smith. 

What else did we see?

Go Inside the Den with us to get our complete set of news, notes, and observations from practice.

INSIDE THE DEN: Penn State football practice observations – April 13

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