Nittany Lions looking positive for 2021 season

By Kenny Varner Jr.
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Updated: August 8, 2021

We are getting ever so close to a brand new season of Penn State Football as the Nittany Lions look to take College football by storm in 2021.
Head Coach James Franklin enters his eighth season at the helm of the Penn State Football program.
“I like where we’re at first day of practice, we couldn’t be more excited to be out there on the grass working together,” Franklin said. “The plan for having a full Beaver Stadium, competing in the Big Ten , opening up obviously week one with Wisconsin, tremendous challenge and then being able to get back home in front of our fans which we haven’t been able to do for a long time.”
The Nittany Lions head into the up and coming season hoping to build upon the late season success during a very unusual 2020 football where originally the Big Ten was not going to have a season due to COVID-19. But then when given the ok, Penn State who entered into that year ranked eighth in the nation, looked to make an impact on the college football scene.
However things did not go according to plan as the Nittany Lions dropped their first five games of the shortened season and appeared as there could be a potential winless season. But they dug down deep and battled their way back to finish the 2020 season winning their final four games to complete the short season with an overall record of (4-5).
One of the things Penn State will look to build upon from last season is the success of the offense. Despite the (4-5) record, the Nittany Lion offense finished the season ranked second in total offense only behind the Ohio State Buckeyes.
The only difference though between each season was the offensive coordinators. During the 2020 season, Penn State’s offensive coordinator was Kirk Ciarrocca who has now currently with West Virginia. This season brings in new offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich who had previous worked for the Texas Longhorns in 2020. In fact, Yurcich has worked with several football players who went on to find success in the NFL including athletes such as Mason Rudolph, James Washington and Super bowl winner Tyreek Hill. But with all of that being said, Coach Franklin believes trying to compare both offenses let alone the season is not very accurate thing to do.
“It’s real hard for me to compare anything to last season because it was so different and there were so many different limiting factors and rules that didn’t allow us to do that,” Franklin explained. “Even being in the indoor facilities, being able to get the walk throughs that we want to get in the offseason, the time we were able to get with our players face to face. We weren’t even practicing as a team at this point last year. I’m not talking about the cancelation, I’m talking about when we got back, it was just very different.”
A key factor heading for the offense this year will be returning quarterback Sean Clifford. Clifford struggled a bit a season ago as he shared some playing time with Will Levis. In the nine games played, Clifford threw for nearly 2,000 yards completing 152 passes out of 251 attempts, had 16 touchdowns to nine interceptions. But with now a full offseason and training camp, Clifford hopes to improve for the coming year. The redshirt Senior is also eyeing some records as well as Clifford is currently 11th all-time in career passing yardage, tied for fifth place in career touchdown with 41 and is tied among with the likes of Todd Blackledge, Tony Sacca and Zack Mills, currently second in career completion percentage only behind Daryll Clark. But he is in first place for career passing efficiency.
“Well any quarterback that has his demeanor, his attitude and wiliness to learn and understands that every day there is something more to obtain and his ceiling is very high,” Yurcich said. “He can get a lot better and so that’s my job to help him along and to guide him and to give him the information that he needs.”
Another exciting factor for the Penn State offense is getting back not just their number one receiver back in Johan Dotson, but also their number wide receiver in Parker Washington.
Despite only getting to play a total of nine games last year, Dotson teared it up on the field nearly getting a thousand yard season. Dotson averaged 17 yards a game on 52 catches for a total of 882 yards for the year including eight touchdown catches.
For Washington, made a great first impression during his freshman campaign with the Nittany Lions finishing only behind Dotson in receiving yards with 489 on just 36 catches. Washington was also second in touchdown catches with six.
Plenty of expectations as well for the defensive side of the ball for Penn State as the Nittany Lions finished third in total defense last year under defensive coordinator Brent Pry who much like Franklin, has returned for his eighth season with the program.
One of the key returners for the Penn State defense is the senior safety Jaquan Briskley. Last year, Briskley played in all nine games for the Nittany Lions 22 overall for his career and had a total of 57 tackles, 33 solo and 24 assisted.
Another returner to the defense is linebacker Jesse Luketa. Luketa was named the team captain a season ago and started eight of the nine total games played. Luketa finished second on the team in tackles with 59 total tackles, 31 of those were solo and 28 were assisted. Luketa also had 2.5 tackles for loss and a fumble recovery. Also there will be a new opportunity for Luketa as he will be splitting his time between the linebacker as well as defensive end positions depending on the situation that the defense will be in during the season.
“It’s not really a monthly deal, we’re going to kinda split his time and I would probably say more of his time will be spent at defensive end in training camp,” Franklin said. “He has such a foundation and history at the Linebacker position already within the same scheme so we want to get him to the point where he is really comfortable and affective in what we’re going to ask him to do at defensive end. Obviously we got to keep him sharp at linebacker position as well. I can see him playing both roles.”
We are now only a few weeks away before the Nittany Lions will have to head out to face Big Ten rival the Wisconsin Badgers on Sept. 4 on Fox Sports. Much like the Nittany Lions, Wisconsin too struggled during the shortened season last year playing in only in seven games, six of those were Big Ten games and their seventh game was in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl when the Badgers defeated Wake Forest.
The Nittany Lions will have their first home game of the season the following week as they will host the Ball State Cardinals.
Good luck to Coach Franklin as well as the entire Penn State Nittany Lion football as they head into the 2021 College Football season. WE ARE! PENN STATE!