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Penn State Football weekly chat: More questions and clarifications about team depth in non-con season

Headshot 5x7 reduced qualityby: Thomas Frank Carr09/05/25ThomasFrankCarr
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Penn State offensive lineman Cooper Cousins. (Pickel/BWI)

Each week, Blue White Illustrated hosts a weekly insiders-only chat for premium subscribers to the site. Our team of reporters and analysts answers their questions and discusses the state of the Penn State football team on the eve of each matchup. You can check out the thread in the link at the end of this article to become a member and gain access to premium intel. Here’s a sampling of this week’s topics, which are ongoing and updating.

  • An update on the status of guard Cooper Cousins
  • Is the non-conference slate a chance to mix and match offensive line combinations?
  • When does the Penn State staff start ramping up the work on flip targets for 2026?
  • What is the updated situation on the offensive line, specifically at tackle, after the first week?

We also discuss the early feedback about the outline of the deal Penn State is getting from its switch from Nike to Adidas.

Why isn’t Penn State playing a better non-conference schedule?

Fans are also antsy about the level of competition that Penn State faces in the first month of the 2025 calendar. Head coach James Franklin commented on how that wasn’t the original plan for this year during his Wednesday press conference.

“It’s a little bit of strategy, and it’s a little bit of kind of the predicament we’re in. For us, we want to put ourselves in the best position to get into conference play as healthy and as confident as we possibly can be to make a run in conference play. But as you guys know, we have played West Virginia, home and home. We played Pitt home and home, we played Auburn home and home.

We were supposed to be playing Virginia Tech this year. I don’t know if everybody realizes that. But we had Virginia Tech scheduled during COVID. When we didn’t go there; that game got canceled because of COVID. We just played conference games. They didn’t want to, obviously, keep the other end of that schedule, which was this year, so that was part of the reason that we’re in the predicament we’re in.” 

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BWI Weekend Chat –Sept 4

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