Penn State open practice highlights: Ohio Bobcats

Penn State held an open practice on Wednesday, and Blue White Illustrated was there to check it out. Thomas Frank Carr takes you through several important storylines of the week heading into the home opener against Ohio. He focuses on the receivers improving from week one, quarterbacks and the defense making a key improvement themselves.

Penn State open practice highlights

T-Frank starts his view of practice with the wide receivers. According to PFF’s tally, the Nittany Lions dropped five passes in the win against Purdue, with receiver KeAndre Lambert-Smith leading the two with two. The team is focused this week on catching the football and eliminating the self-harming mistakes. Despite that, the Nittany Lions still put up 35 points, thanks to two long touchdowns by Lambert-Smith and Brenton Strange. Both players broke a key tackle to get into the secondary and score.

On the flip side, the defense is working on catching the football themselves. The defense got their hands on 10 pass breakups according to PFF’s tally and 16 according to Penn State’s internal counting. Franklin stressed during his Tuesday press conference that it wasn’t just the offense that would be working on catching the football this week.

Finally, T-Frank makes his way over to the running backs. Unlike Strange and Lambert-Smith, the Nittany Lions runners struggled to break into the open field on Thursday. Starter Keyvone Lee led the team with four missed tackles, but freshmen Nick Singleton managed only one. Both he and fellow freshman Kaytron Allen have the reputation as physical runners, which will be essential to show this weekend.

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Penn State aims to keep rotations in play at multiple spots during Week 2 clash with Ohio

Penn State beat Purdue 35-31 while using numerous players are a few key positions in West Lafayette. Based on both the win and how each Lion performed, those are here to stay for now.

The Lions held practice, part of which was open to the media, on a rainy day in State College and across Pennsylvania. They will retake the game field on Saturday, when Ohio comes to town for a Noon kick on ABC that marks this year’s home opener for Penn State.

“Mainly at the end of the day we got to get better this week,” head coach James Franklin said Tuesday. “That’s in every area, offense, defense, special teams, and also individually. If we do that each week as the season progresses, I think we’ll like where we’re at.”

On Wednesday, the ninth-year leader of the Lions was asked to address where things stand at running back, along the offensive line, and at middle linebacker following game one. And, one thing was plainly clear by the time Franklin finished his roughly 10 minute news conference in front of a backdrop just outside of Holuba Hall.

Check out the rest of this article here.