Picking Apart Joe Paterno's Presser

Now that we all know Clark will start Saturday against Coastal Carolina, I won’t touch on it too much. But I’ll go over that, and the rest of the press conference in this post. So first, the quarterback decision:

“We're going to start with (Daryll) Clark and probably play (Pat) Devlin for sure some. And the other kid that I really think that we've got to give him a shot some time in there is (Paul) Cianciolo… All three kids have played in practice really well, and all three can get the job done. Clark's had a little more experience. He's had a good spring practice, and a really good pre-season so we're going to go with Clark; start him.”

I don’t see Cianciolo playing as much as Paterno leads us to believe, but I think he has the luxury of saying that due to the fact that Penn State will, more likely than not, blow away CCU this week. I do think Devlin will play this week, but not much. They will give him a series or two it things go PSU’s way early, but you won’t see the full-blown “Spread HD” until Oregon State. But then, I’m not sure PSU will want to reveal too much right away if they don’t have to, but they still have to try it out in real games.

“There were some things that we knew he could do. In fact, during the year I've said this a couple of times - Jay Paterno, came to me, he said maybe we ought to stick Clark in there and change the pace with him. And again, I'm repeating myself. But I always felt that Morelli got more criticism than he deserved. And I wasn't going to pile it on by sticking Clark in there and (have people) saying, "even the coach doesn't like him," something like that.”

Joe changes drastically during game week. This is a great example. Many in the MSM (main stream media) claim he’s out of touch with the big picture, which the MSM and fans seem to know more about. Did it sound like he’s out of touch there? He know’s how the fans and the MSM think, and that’s why he didn’t put Clark in at each moment Morelli made a boo-boo.

“I think Chaz has an awful lot of athletic ability, and we're doing a lot of things with (Derrick) Williams on the offensive side of the football. If something happened to Derrick, a lot of the preparation that's gone into the season might be lost if we didn't have somebody close to his talent that we could stick in there. Powell is the closest guy.”

Read that carefully, then remember that PSU is, by all intents and purposes, going back to a 2005-style spread offense. After his freshman year, it was like PSU tried to make Williams into a pure WR, which failed horribly. Joe and (hate to say it) Jay really want to get Williams the kind of touches he did in ’05—reverses, option pitches, long balls. We saw that at the tail-end of last season, against Purdue especially. Why else would Joe be worried about him getting hurt, other than the fact that he’ll be more involved in essentially every play.

Oh, and one more point in the “Joe’s out of touch” thing:

“South Florida, for instance. South Florida is a fine football team after (only) eight, 10 years. They were (nearly) playing for a national championship. Last year they were No. 2 at one time.”

How many times have we heard Joe say he doesn’t pay attention to other teams or the polls? He does, folks, and we all knew it the whole time. Joe’s a bad liar.

Joe was also asked about Odrick and Hayes. They’re good to go, apparently. Luckily he doesn’t lie when it comes to players.

Something I was very interested in seeing was how the Andrew Quarless situation would be addressed. Joe seemed upbeat about the prospect that Quarless will play much more than we were all led to believe.

“I waited until his grades came in; he did a good job. So right now he'd be probably behind (Mickey) Shuler. He wouldn't be ahead of Shuler. Shuler's had a spring and good pre-season. And the young kid (Andrew Szczerba) is not quite as fast as Quarless. Quarless is a pretty good athlete, so is Shuler. Now Quarless is okay.”

This is huge news for PSU. I’m sorry, Szczerba was great in the spring game, and Shuler could start for most teams across the nation, but Quarless has unique talent and skill that cannot be easily replaced. This will come in huge for PSU if the offense really wants to get buzzing by October.

And the final topic I’ll touch on was that Joe called out his secondary (among other units) on not turning over the ball enough.

“I think we always try to emphasize that. I think we were disappointed that we didn't get more turnovers (Last year). We didn't really, last year. We've tried to talk about playing a little faster...getting a better jump on the ball, those kinds of things. But we pretty much do it all the time. Last year, we weren't very good when we had the football as far as turnovers go. I think we turned the ball over more times than anybody we played. And I don't mean each game, but as a total.”

We were spoiled in 2005 with a secondary that seemed to score more points than the offense. Ok, not really, but how key were those turnovers caused by Alan Zamaitis against USF, Michigan and MSU, and Calvin Lowry against Ohio State? Those are the kind of game-changing moments missing from 2007. And don’t forget when Donnie Johnson dropped that sure pick-6 against Wisconsin in 2006.

“I think that is something you're always on their backs (about). But once in a while they just don't get it done. But I think we have to get the turnovers. I don't care, it's still a game of turnovers.”

Oh, it’s going to be a very fun season.

Complete Press Conference Transcript HERE from GoPSUSports.com.