BWI Daily: Penn State Spring practice preview

The Blue-White Podcast: A Penn State Athletics Podcast

The BWI Daily Edition prepares you for spring football with a preview of the next week hosted by Nate Bauer and Sean Fitz. Today they’ll discuss the camp battles that they find interesting, give an update on the defensive line coach search, and discuss what they expect to hear from head coach James Franklin.

Check out the full show tonight at 7 pm on YouTube. If you haven’t yet, subscribe to Blue White Illustrated on YouTube and enable notifications.

No news yet on a Penn State defensive line coach

Penn State insider Sean Fitz has nothing solid yet on who head coach James Franklin will hire as his next defensive line coach. In fact, he says that no one outside of Franklin knows anything. However, he does think there’s a timeline for when news could come out.

“Every time, it’s getting tighter, and it’s getting even worse to cover. But I think they’ll have something soon. Of course, with spring practice starting to or Tuesday, you’ve got that, I guess, an unofficial barrier that you have to get something in place before that, not necessarily have to do it, but it seems like they want to get something done. So a Friday news dump would not surprise me for the defensive line position,” he said.

The Nittany Lions still have defensive line assistant and analyst Deion Barnes on staff, so the transition, whenever it happens, can be smooth. Barnes remains a candidate to get the job as well.

Next, Bauer and Fitz preview what Franklin will address in his Tuesday press conference to start spring practice. Bauer knows the rhythm of how these press conferences go.

“I think he’s going to talk about the newcomers. I mean, is there anything that you’re specifically looking for from that press conference on Tuesday that sort of sets the stage of? Because it happens every year? Right. There’s always a theme. I think he’s going to talk about the newcomers,” Bauer comments.

Penn State’s early enrollees usually take center stage as the media are curious about the players they don’t know yet. However, there’s also another aspect of this that Fitz touches on during the conversation. Check out the show for more.

A real quarterback battle?

Finally, Bauer and Fitz tackle a tricky subject. Is there an actual, honest quarterback battle brewing for spring practice? Or will freshman backup and former five-star prospect Drew Allar be the undisputed starter over fellow Class of 2022 quarterback Beau Pribula?

“I guess this is kind of the natural trajectory of this conversation, right? What are we doing with quarterback? How are we going to frame this? Because in the minds of literally everyone, I don’t know anyone outside of the internal coach-speak who is framing this as a battle,” Bauer says.

It’s a problem Fitz understands keenly when discussing the topic with source.

“It’s so funny because, when you talk to people in the program, you have to sort of filter out what’s going on in terms of Beau because they are so excited about this kid.In another year, if Drew’s not here, he’s a starter. That’s kind of where they feel about this, and you have to balance out what that means in relation to Drew.”

Penn State’s spring practice media day starts on Tuesday. Check out Blue White Illustrated on YouTube to get James Franklin’s comments to kick off spring football.

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