Penn State gets healthy ahead of regular-season finale

Penn State football should be much closer to full health Saturday than it was when the Nittany Lions took on Rutgers last week. The team dealt with a bout of the flu that made 21 players unavailable for the 28-0 win over the Scarlet Knights, and that doesn’t include the 14 players who played through it.

Penn State coach James Franklin said most of the 35 players affected by the virus have since recovered but there’s another round of it making its way through the facility.

“We had massive numbers on Saturday with 35 guys (being sick),” Franklin said. “Most of those guys are coming out of it and in a pretty good place. But as you can imagine, we’d have a few more, kind of go into it, with the flu. So it’s a little bit of a moving target.”

Franklin didn’t update the status of every player, but added that Sean Clifford wasn’t feeling great Sunday, felt better Monday and now feels normal again.

The redshirt senior starting quarterback tried to play through the illness Saturday but didn’t make it through the first quarter before he was pulled in favor of true freshman Christian Veilleux.

Veilleux took the opportunity and ran with it, completing 15 of 24 passes for 235 yards and three touchdowns in the game while leading a resurgent offense to score all 28 of the team’s points in the game against Rutgers.

The true freshman stood out Saturday, but now that Clifford is healthy, the quarterback rotation will return to what it was previously.

“Veilleux did some really good things that we’re excited about and want to build on,” Franklin said. “He’s been getting the No. 2 reps in practice and was ready to play. That’s how it will be again this week. Sean will get his reps. I thought Sean had his best week of practice last week before getting sick. … We’ll go back to the rotation that we have had. Obviously it’s a good feeling knowing that you have a guy that you feel has played and played at a high level in an actual game and game reps, which is something that we hadn’t had up until that point.”

While the team is still dealing with some residual cases of the illness that knocked out a good portion of the roster Saturday, it still has a chance to be fairly healthy going into Saturday’s matchup with the Michigan State Spartans.

Franklin said the team’s overall health is at a place he’s happy with considering its already 11 games into the season and heading into the regular season finale.

“This time of the year, everybody is banged up, as you can imagine,” Franklin said. “Some are healthier than others. I think once we get through this last bit of flu, knock on wood, that I think we could be as healthy as we’ve been in a couple weeks, which would be great.”

Outside of Clifford, Franklin also noted that sophomore linebacker Curtis Jacobs and redshirt senior center Mike Miranda — who both missed the game against Rutgers — are both expected to practice and play this weekend.