Penn State defensive meetings dig into more than football

If you wonder what college football coaches are doing to pass the time these days, Brent Pry is one guy keeping himself busy.

And it’s not all football for Penn State’s defensive coordinator.

“For us, there is a lot of Zoom (conference calls) going on (with staff, players and extended family members),” he said Tuesday from his home.

But with families confined to the house, there’s a positive side to being isolated.

“Walking dogs,” he said. “Heck, we tried to walk our cats a couple times. Board games, card games. Introduced to all kinds of new things I’m not usually here in the evening for. It’s been good that way, that’s for sure.”

For every school in the U.S., the pandemic changed how and how much football business gets done — practices and spring games have been shelved for the foreseeable future — but Pry tries to make his regular meetings with his players as normal as possible.

“These days are kind of like roller coasters,” he said. “One minute, you get a descriptive documentation of what’s going on out there, and it’s terrible in some places and heartbreaking.

“Other times, you’re trying to go about your business and continue to grow your family and develop these players and help everybody get through this in the right way.”

No one knows if summer training camp, which doesn’t start until early August, will be disrupted. There’s even been talk about the difficulty of playing the season at all.

In the best of times, teams lay a foundation for summer camp during spring practice.

To compensate for the loss of 15 sessions, Pry said he’s videoconferencing with his position group — the linebackers — several times a week.

“We’re going through installations just like if we were back in Lasch (the football building) in that linebacker meeting room,” he said.

“We’re able to share screens, go through a diagram and watch video together. It’s healthy we’re connecting in that way.”

But at the outset of the meetings, Pry puts off football for other important pursuits.

“The meetings usually start with cutting up on each other like normal,” he said. “Then, we get into questions about what’s going on with everybody’s families. ‘Is this hitting home with anybody?’

“At the same time, you dive into the football piece and workouts and just kind of gauge where these guys are.”

Pry said coaches, trainers and nutritionists keep in close contact with the players, most of whom are home without the structure provided by coaches.

“We talk about the workout aspect and health and these guys getting out in some sunshine and solitude to do some things to stay healthy,” he said.

“You wonder about guys between meetings and what’s going on in their lives. You don’t want to see anybody slipping away or giving into this thing. We’ve been really good. Everybody (on the coaching staff) is meeting with their guys across the board.”

This is an important offseason for Penn State. The Nittany Lions hired Kirk Ciarrocca as offensive coordinator to replace Ricky Rahne, who left to become head coach at Old Dominion. Spring practice would have been the ideal time for players to get to know his way of doing things and any tweaks to the offense he has planned.

Meanwhile, on Pry’s side of the ball, there is plenty of work to do.

The Nittany Lions improved their run defense dramatically last season, moving from No. 72 in 2018 (169 yards per game) to No. 5 (95). But Pry wasn’t pleased with the number of explosive plays allowed in the passing game as Penn State fell to 100th in the nation, next-to-last in the Big Ten (251.5 per game).

Even with linebacker Micah Parsons getting 14 tackles and two sacks in the Cotton Bowl victory against Memphis, Penn State surrendered an average of 9 yards per pass attempt and 39 points.

Pry said coaches questioned all aspects of its unit and even studied some of college football’s best pass defenses.

“Was it lack of rush? Was it inexperience at the position? Was it quarterbacks able to ID cover too easily? Was it not enough coverage variety? Was it too many coverages and not playing any of them quite well enough?

“Did we overcommit to the box? Did we get too aggressive in supporting the run and create some liabilities. It was a good offseason study.”