Penn State Football: Plenty Of Options, But Will Nittany Lions Really Roll More Than One Primary Back?

Penn State running back’s coach Ja’Juan Seider is confident in his room, and he probably should be. Not short on youth or talent, it presents the Nittany Lions with one of the more open running back races in recent years. 

On paper it would certainly look like Ricky Slade’s job to lose, but with no shortage of potential behind him, it’s not as though he has a Saquon-size gap between himself and everyone else.

“We have some guys in this program that can play,” Seider said after practice on Wednesday. “We were a little depth-deprived last year. This year, we have [Slade and Journey Brown] that we feel really good about and [early enrollee Noah Cain] starting to grow up.”

And even Seider will concede that Slade certainly looks the part, even more than he might have in 2018.

“His body is different. He’s starting to put that college weight on him,” Seider said. “The stuff that we worried about earlier — like blocking and breaking tackles — he’s starting to take that on.”

All eyes on the Blue White game would have wanted to see Dyven Ford in action, but the former No. 1 overall rated running back recruit doesn’t enroll on campus until the fall, which means you might not see him at all until the games really matter.

Even so, he’s preparing for that moment a few months away.

“[Ford] is watching practice on his iPad and hitting me back with a ton of notes and questions. He’s a student of the game,” Seider said. “He’s got a ‘Saquon’ mentality. He doesn’t know how good he is because he’s always asking questions.”

“This season is so long — it’s a lot of wear and tear on these guys,” Seider added. “The fresher we can get those guys to be towards the end of the season, the better we’re going to be, especially when the weather changes and we want to pound the ball a little bit more.” 

Heading into 2019 with multiple options in the backfield, it does raise the question of how many of them will actually see the field. The Saquon Barkley era slants the stats a bit, but Penn State has only had two seasons in the past 10 years where two running backs have had over 40% of the carries by the top three backs on the team. 

Beyond that, the No. 1 guy has been the No. 1 guy by a pretty wide margin. It stands to reason that more than a few guys will give Slade, or whoever ends up with the job a spell here or there, but if history is any indication, Penn State has rarely been a two-back operation.

But the list of things that have changed around the program is far longer than the list of the things that has stayed the same. So what’s one more to the list?