Creating depth chart a players' affair at Penn State

STATE COLLEGE — Every year at this time, college football fans wait anxiously for coaching staffs to settle on their first depth chart of the season, giving them their first look at what their favorite teams will look like on the field when the season opens.

James Franklin gave Penn State fans that depth chart Tuesday morning, though he took surprisingly little credit for forming it later.

Four days before he starts his sixth season as the Nittany Lions’ head coach. Franklin answered plenty of questions about how his team will line up Saturday when it faces Idaho in the season opener at Beaver Stadium. But, he revealed that he and his staff have plenty of help piecing together that list of players week by week from surprising sources.

“We have the players rank themselves, which I think is a really good discussion and really good way to go about it,” Franklin said during the first of his weekly press conferences Tuesday. “Have the defensive line rank the defensive line. How do they do it? How do the receivers rank? How would the running backs do it? I’d say more times than not, fairly consistently, the players see it the same way as the coaches. I wouldn’t say individual players always see it the same way as the coaches, but the group does. That’s been really valuable.”

Franklin and his staff took the suspense out of the biggest race in camp this month, naming Sean Clifford the starting quarterback last week. But the first depth chart revealed several key position battles that ended with the promise of divided playing time come Saturday.

Players and coaches were in agreement, Franklin said: Sophomore Ricky Slade, who rushed for 257 yards and six touchdowns as a backup to Miles Sanders in 2018, will get the first series against the Vandals. But speedster Journey Brown and a pair of true freshmen — Noah Cain and Devyn Ford — were listed as co-starters on the depth chart, and all are expected to see playing time.

Moving forward, Franklin said, the hottest back or the best matchups against a given defense might end up determining who plays the most in a given week down the road.

Franklin also said that three guards, senior Steven Gonzalez and sophomores C.J. Thorpe and Mike Miranda, will likely see a fairly even split of snaps; same with the tackle spot, where starters Will Fries and Rasheed Walker could see sophomore Des Holmes work his way onto the field.

As expected, Robert Windsor and Antonio Shelton are listed as the starters at defensive tackle, but Franklin said the top four backups there will get a chance to be regular contributors, giving the Nittany Lions their deepest rotation there in years.

Players helped determine all those rotations, and Franklin said they’ve been part of the decision-making process for a few years, since assistant coach Terry Smith first had his cornerbacks essentially vote on a depth chart as a way of holding each other accountable.

“It’s great information for the players,” Franklin said. “A lot of times, when it’s just the coaches doing it alone, (players) will look at it and be able to justify and rationalize whatever is going on. But when they hear it from their peers … there’s value in it.

“It creates a healthy discussion and allows those guys to hold each other accountable in that room and say, ‘No, this is why I’ve got you ranked fourth or why I’ve got you ranked fifth. You aren’t doing these things the way you need to do them consistently.’ That feedback … is powerful.”

Nittany notes

The three former Lackawanna College players who joined the program in the offseason all appeared on Penn State’s first depth chart. Safety Jaquan Brisker was named the top backup to junior Lamont Wade at safety. Anthony Whigan is the third-string right guard, behind Thorpe and Miranda, and Bradley King is the No. 3 punter behind senior Blake Gillikin and sophomore Jordan Stout. … Senior linebacker Cam Brown is suspended for the first half of Saturday’s game, the result of the targeting penalty he received in the Citrus Bowl loss to Kentucky on Jan. 1. Sophomore Micah Parsons is expected to take Brown’s starting spot at Sam linebacker, with sophomore Jesse Luketa taking Parsons’ customary spot at the Will. … Newcomers who have been given the green light to play from the outset of the season are freshmen defensive linemen Dvon Ellies and Adisa Isaac, linebackers Brandon Smith and Lance Dixon, running backs Cain and Ford and offensive tackle Caedan Wallace. Brisker, Stout and receiver Weston Carr, a graduate transfer from Azusa Pacific, are the others.