Penn State cornerback coach Terry Smith is in his seventh year working with the Nittany Lions on James Franklin's staff, and like everyone else, it is a year unlike any other.
Wednesday morning, Smith joined media members for a Zoom web conference to talk about the experience and youth in the cornerbacks room, the goals for this offseason, and much more. Check out the complete transcript from the session, here:
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*The following transcript has been edited for clarity.*
On the development of freshman corners Keaton Ellis and Marquis Wilson:
TS: With Keaton and Marquis, obviously they played a lot of football for us as true freshmen. Their development throughout the season, they just continued to get better and better. In the bowl game, Marquis had a critical interception late in the game that helped us in that game. We're really looking forward to those guys. We see them both as major contributors, they're both battling for that other starting corner position.
Their development through the offseason, they had a great winter leading into the spring. They're very conscientious guys. I'm looking forward to having the opportunity to get back out on the field with those two guys.
On the progress and role of senior safety Lamont Wade:
TS: Lamont has grown tremendously from the time he walked in as a freshman, playing right away. His maturity is at a different level, his leadership is at a different level. He's truly the leader of the entire secondary. We meet separately, corners and safeties, but when we come together he's the leader of the group. I wouldn't be surprised if Lamont is probably gonna be a captain of the team. He's the voice of our defense.
His growth has been tremendous in the sense of, he now knows exactly who he is with strengths and weaknesses. He knows what he needs to work on and develop. He's become a really good football player for us. He had a great season for us last year and we're just looking forward to his senior year just exploding and doing some great things for us.
On the progress of redshirt freshmen Joey Porter Jr. and Daequan Hardy, and what it meant to bring in four corners in the Class of 2019:
TS: Starting with Joey Porter, obviously he brings great length and great athleticism. I'm excited to see his growth from freshman redshirt year to repeating the freshman year, athletically. He's done a great job off the field. He's picked up the system. I think he's in the mix as well for that starting position. We played them into four games that we were allowed to play him and he showed up and he made some plays. He nearly had a nice interception at the Maryland game. I'm looking forward to him continue to progress.
Daequan Hardy was one of our scout team players of the year. He had a great offseason. He's picked up 14, 15 pounds. He's bigger, he's stronger, he's faster. He's super smart. He's probably one of the smarter guys in the room. He continues to develop. He's gonna have an opportunity to play some at our star position. And I'm looking forward to him come competing as well.
When you talk about the whole group, to bring in four guys, we really feel like we hit it great with all four guys. Usually, when you bring four in, one or two aren't quite what you think they're going to be or what you thought they were going to be. We feel fantastic with all four of them. We feel like all four are going to develop into major contributors. Whether they're the starter or not, they're going to be guys that are going to play a lot of football, whether it be special teams. I tend to rotate my guys quite a bit from past history so those guys, they're going to see the field quite a bit.
On redshirt junior Donovan Johnson coming off an injury year:
TS: Donovan, he's a major factor in that as well. You know, he's played a lot of football up until his injuries. Unfortunately for him the last two seasons, have been marred with injury. But prior to that, he was right there in the mix. He's very talented, very skilled, knowledgeable, experienced. So he's in the mix and prepared fully. He's completely 100% healthy if nothing happens going forward. But he's got an opportunity.
And once we get back to ball, he's gonna be the first guy on the field to play and compete and then we'll see how this thing shakes out. It's a great thing for us, especially in my room, I've got quite a few guys that I feel can contribute. So we have great competition, which means these guys got to show up every day and perform day in and day out at practice and through games.
On playing against Kirk Ciarrocca last year and the challenges his system poses to corners, as well as the loss of Sean Spencer from the staff:
TS: Obviously, if you can't beat him, we had to bring him to us to join us. What a fantastic offensive mind. We're excited to have Kirk here. In that game, preparing for Minnesota and preparing for Kirk's offense, he has a strong RPO game. And with the RPO game, it limits your underneath help for the secondary so your box players are linebackers, then your defensive line, they're connected to the line of scrimmage because they got to play run first and now it leaves your corners and your safeties out there on islands and the receivers have a lot more two-way goes with no underneath presence from the linebacker. So that puts a lot of stress on you.
And when you're in zone coverage and you're having zone eyes to the quarterback and these receivers are snapping their routes in front of you and you don't have a presence of a linebacker underneath you, it's stress. As you can see, we had a tough day that day. We're going to continue to work on that and prepare for that and get our guys in better position. When you play the RPO game, it's sort of like playing Army West Point. It's option football. You have to play your responsibility and you can't get caught peeking another direction, otherwise they're gonna make you pay for that thing.
Coach Spencer's a great personality. He was the life of our defensive staff and our defensive unit. We miss him dearly. He had a tremendous opportunity with the Giants to progress his career, so we're really, really happy for him. But we brought in a guy, John Scott, who we feel that we won't miss a beat. John has NFL experience. He's coming from the SEC. He's bringing a different type of flavor and energy that we've welcomed and the players have welcomed. We're excited about the opportunity for him to take us to new heights and to to make us a better defense.
On the role of Penn State football in eventually reuniting the community:
TS: We're all dealing with some tough times and just a new way of life. And we're all in this together. We're super thankful for all the volunteers out there, all the medical staff that are putting themselves at risk to help the community. Penn state football, we're a major factor in our community and we know that. We take on that responsibility and once we get back to being able to be on campus and football can move forward, we're looking to contribute in the community where we can.
There's two things that bring communities together, and it's tragedy and it's sports. And for our community, Penn State football is that bond. We're going to love on each other. We're going to rally around our community. We're going to rally around Penn State nation and just try to receive all the love and give all the love and try to get our community back to thriving and happiness and get Happy Valley back to happy.
On Tariq Castro-Fields' junior season and expectations for the year ahead:
TS: The big thing with Tariq, obviously he's the leader of the corner room. We're looking forward to Tariq having a great offseason and Tariq, not to put pressure on him, needs to have a great year for us. We need a lockdown corner that can handle the best receiver of whoever our opponent is. We expect Tariq to be that guy.
His season last year was almost like two different seasons. The first half of the season, he came out the gate looking like a first-round draft pick. He played very well and then he suffered an injury. And from that injury on, he was a different player. He wasn't as confident, he wasn't as sure of himself because of the injury. Not to make an excuse, he knows and recognizes it and we've talked about it. It's one of our offseason plans and goals for himself is to make sure that he can be more consistent throughout the season. Obviously the first half of the season, he played exactly how we wanted him to play. And in the second half, football's a physical sport. The injuries are going to come, the peaks and the valleys are going to come, but we have to remain consistent through all of that and perform the same way, play in and play out. So he understands that.
And there's no added pressure to him because it's something he wants for himself. He wants to be a first round draft pick. And so along with that comes a great responsibility of covering the best receiver of the opponent and performing at a high level, making the play when you need to make the play. And our other goal for him is, he's a good cover corner, but now it's time to not just be a good cover corner, go make plays as a cover corner. Get the ball back, make interceptions, force fumbles. Make big, game-changing plays where it impacts the game and gets the ball back to our offense so those guys can go down and score touchdowns
On the areas for improvement for the corners this offseason:
TS: When you look into our zone schemes, the underneath coverage from our linebackers got to get better. There's often times through play action, we just talked about the RPO, when there's any mesh with the quarterback in the back, our backers can't be stepping into the line of scrimmage. We have to make sure we get our drops. We got to have better zone vision, better eye vision from our secondary.
And then we got to have better communication. There's times, I think it was the Rutgers game, we completely blew a coverage and guy's running down the middle of the field, wide open. That can't happen. I mean, no matter how we look at it, that can never happen. So our communication has to get better.
The one thing that we did really, really well was, we were I think third in the nation in least touchdown passes given up. So we gave up a lot of pass yards this year, which we're going to fix that. But the one thing we did well was we didn't give up home runs over the top. We made teams earn their points, and teams couldn't earn their points against you. We want to remain stout up front in the run game, but we got to get the pass game to match it.
On recruiting for the Class of 2021:
TS: I think we're doing a fantastic job right now. We're really happy where we are. We've gotten some good commits here in the last week. We're anticipating maybe a couple more coming up here. We're probably a little bit ahead of schedule.
Usually the Bliue-White weekend, we grab a few and then it kind of snowballs. The commitments kind of run and rally. So you get one, you usually get two or three and then you get a little long and then you make a little run again, and usually that starts right around that Blue-White weekend. It started a week earlier.
We're really happy though. We're working really hard. Everyone is working remotely from home. And so to me, the recruiting has really picked up, like it's super busy. From the time I wake up, I'm on my phone, to the time I lay down and just say, Enough is enough, I gotta go to sleep, you're just constantly recruiting and communicating with prospects.
And it's been great. There's a lot of great prospects out there interested in Penn State. This year is gonna be a smaller class. Last year we took a huge class. And so, you're gonna cut almost 10 guys, the difference from last year's class to this year's class. So we got to be a little bit more particular to what we want. But it's been great. We're doing a really good job on offense defense, and, we got a couple special teams guys that we're looking for as well.
On what he'd tell an NFL front office executive about John Reid in advance of the NFL Draft:
TS: My answer is, John Reid has the best feet in the draft of any corner out there. John Reid is smarter than anybody out there. John Reid is going to work extremely hard. He has an engineering degree. Football is important to him. It's how he wants to feed his family.
John Reid is a great cover guy. This year he worked tremendously on improving his tackling, As a junior, he struggled as a tackler and this year, he led our team in missed tackle percentage. So he knows where his weaknesses are and where his strengths are.
John's projected to be a nickel in the NFL, and I don't know if there's a better prospect going into the draft to play inside against those slots, to play against a guy like KJ Hamler, who's dynamic, or DeSean Jackson, these dynamic slot receivers, because true corners, a lot of those guys struggle when you put them on the inside. They can't handle a receiver that has a two-way go. John Reid can handle that. He's the best in the draft in my opinion.
On whether or not he misses high school coaching at all:
TS: It's a different feel. When you're a high school coach, that community feel of the community around you where you grew up and the kids and the families are all right there, yeah, I miss that. It's a great family feeling. When you're talking about the difference in connecting to college kids versus high school kids, the majority of your team in high school isn't going to go play college football. The majority of those guys are playing because their buddy's playing, because the community is strong and it supports them. For a various amount of reasons.
When you come to college, well, we've recruited these guys here. They're here to play football. And they're going to go to school and be a student-athlete. But their main purpose is to come play football. Even the walk-ons, they're enticed or recruited to come here. And so their full commitment is football and in high school, it's just a little bit different. There's guys, don't get me wrong, that's what their purpose is.
But every level, in my opinion, in the locker room, you lose slightly a little bit. Meaning, you go from high school, that locker room is so pure, so genuine. There's no money involved in it, they're doing it because they love it. And you go to college, and it's pure to a sense, but those guys have their eyes on the NFL. And at the end point is, I got to get to the NFL. Then you get to the NFL and Well, I got to protect my family. I got to play for my family, so it's a bunch of individuals in that locker room. So every level, we lose a little bit of that team camaraderie, and in high school. It's at its purest.
On the nickel position this season:
TS: So right now we're expecting multiple guys. Obviously, Lamont Wade played the nickel last year for us a lot. What happens with the nickel depending on where he comes from, whether Lamont's a safety, John Reid was a corner, so the nickel can come from either room. It depends on the depth of the room as to where the position is going to come from. So last year I had those four true freshmen and early in the season, they just weren't ready to go out there and be able to handle the corner position to allow John to bump in and at the safety position, we had Jaquan Brisker who was ready to come in and fill that position so that's how Lamont ended up playing more nickel than John Reid.
And so this year, the safety position has a little bit more question marks. We got Jaquan Brisker and we've got Lamont, but then there's a group of guys that we're not sure who that next person is that's going to emerge. And then at the corner position, we got some young guys, we kind of know what they got. And so, it may lend that the star position may come from my room, which that would be a Donovan Johnson, that'd be a Keaton Ellis, that'd be a Daequan Hardy. All three of those guys are nickel guys. They practiced the nickel. They know the nickel. And they have the opportunity.
So between those three and Lamont Wade, those are the four guys that are vying for that nickel position. And like I said, the depth will kind of dictate which room it comes from and then from there, we'll pinpoint who that true nickel player is.
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