The tough questions were coming, and as bravely as he faced them, Angelo Mangiro had to know he’d be powerless to stop them.
Did Penn State’s offensive line start a turnaround with its domination of Massachusetts? Or was it simply a respite from the hard-charging defenses that will dot most of its schedule?
Saturday against Northwestern, anybody who watched the embarrassing 29-6 destruction of the Nittany Lions had their answer.
Penn State was just too big, too strong and too fast for the overpowered Minutemen a week earlier. But there were still so many problems to correct up front, that even the Wildcats made the Nittany Lions look feeble.
“This bye week is going to be huge for us,” Mangiro said. “We can get those things corrected and prepare for our next game.”
That was being Mangiro’s stock answer. First, for a question about what he and his fellow linemen need to improve as Penn State ventures into the meat of its Big Ten schedule starting next weekend at Michigan. Then, for a question about whether he had hoped the line would be further along almost halfway into the season.
They’re working hard every day, he insisted. But every Saturday, those same questions come. Behind them are questions that may tell the tale of why Penn State is in this predicament up front in the first place.
How did a once-mighty Lions line reach this state? Is there any sign it will change?
The last handcuff
James Franklin admits the line needs to be better. It needs to protect star quarterback Christian Hackenberg and take pressure off the passing game by opening some holes for running backs.
Penn State’s running game ranks 112th out of 125 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision in his first season as head coach, and that’s including a dominant effort against UMass. Hackenberg has been sacked 14 times, putting Penn State in 104th place in sacks allowed per game.
For as much as those facts are the ones holding Penn State’s offense back after its first month, Franklin also hints that it won’t easily be resolved.
The line he and offensive line coach Herb Hand inherited is one they knew, from the outset, would need a complete overhaul.
While many fans celebrated — quietly or passionately — the lifting of practically every NCAA sanction in relation to the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, the 2014 offensive line stands as the last handcuff dangling from a punished Penn State.
Twelve of its members came to the program as scholarship recruits since 2010. One of them is guard Miles Dieffenbach — the team’s best lineman — who is out after tearing a knee ligament in spring practice.
That said, Penn State recruited far more than 12 offensive linemen since 2010. It’s just that more than a handful of them are no longer in the program.
Four scholarship players brought in with the classes of 2010 and 2011, players who would be juniors or seniors on this year’s team, are no longer with the program.
So, after Dieffenbach, Mangiro and tackle Donovan Smith, there are no other veteran linemen who were brought in pre-sanctions.
In with the new
Sanctions or no sanctions, Penn State would have had to rebuild its offensive line in 2014. It lost four starters from last year’s line, had to work around Dieffenbach’s injury and quite simply got itself caught in a cycle.
Of this year’s starters, only Smith had ever started a game in the past. Only he and Mangiro had ever seen significant playing time.
Of the five backups, only center Wendy Laurent had ever gotten into a game. Two second-stringers, left tackle Albert Hall and guard Tom Devenney, are walk-ons.
The issue is that the sanctions have not been conducive to providing the best competition for spots a coaching staff would like. A full one-third of the linemen on scholarship right now are true freshmen and even blue-chip offensive line prospects rarely contribute as true freshmen in big-time college football.
That’s part of the reason three of the most heralded players verbally committed to Franklin’s 2015 recruiting class — Ryan Bates, Sterling Jenkins and Steven Gonzalez — are offensive linemen.
The position needs to be rebuilt, from the bottom up. That rebuilding is only just beginning.
(Collins covers Penn State football for Times-Shamrock. Follow him on Twitter
@psubst)