By Joshua Yoder

STATE COLLEGE – Well Penn State fans, we are only a few weeks away until the return of Penn State football. The Nittany Lions are looking to build upon their success of last season where they made it all the way to the semi-finals before being defeated by the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in a close contest.

The Nittany Lions come into this season with a preseason ranking of number three in the nation. In fact, Penn State had received 14 first place votes; this is the highest that the Nittany Lions have been ranked in the preseason since 1999. Only the defending National Champions, the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Texas Longhorns are ranked higher than Penn State.

Offensively, it will be interesting to see how the Nittany Lions will do to replace tight end Tyler Warren who was a major part of the offense this past season. Warren, who was drafted by the Colts in the NFL draft back in April, was not only one of the top players in the Big Ten, but one of the top players in the whole country and was very deserving of the John Mackey Award. Warren leaves Penn State with a career of 153 catches, 1,839 yards with an average of 12 yards per catch and 19 receiving touchdowns. But as mentioned earlier, Warren was a man of many talents as he also had 32 rushing attempts for 224 yards (218 of those are from last year) averaging seven yards per carry and six rushing touchdowns.

Speaking of rushing, one main focuses for Penn State will be the dynamic duo of Nic Singleton and Kaytron Allen.  Arguably one of if not the best running back duo in college football as both running backs are coming off an incredible season where they both ran over a 1,000 yards last year and will be looking to repeat those performances.

Penn State will also be looking to build up the wide receiver group with incoming talent like Trebor Pena who was with Syracuse last year along with Devonte Ross from Troy and Kyron Hudson who played with USC a season ago has also joined Penn State.

Drew Allar will also be looking to have a big year after coming off last year where, as the starting quarterback, he started all 16 games and compiled a 13-3 record with a completion percentage of 66.5 for over 3,000 yards and 24 touchdowns.

On the defensive side of the ball, the Nittany Lions have replaced Tom Allen who went to become the defensive coordinator at Clemson with Jim Knowles who is coming off of winning a National title with the Buckeyes as well as having the number ranked defense in the nation.

Knowles will look to create that same magic there at Penn State and it will be interesting to see what he does with players like Dominic DeLuca, AJ Harris, Tony Rojas, Zane Durant, Dani Dennis-Sutton as well as incoming players like Amare Campbell, King Mack and edge rushers Owen Wafle and Enai White.

The Nittany Lions will also not have to worry about traveling much for the early part of the season as they will have their first four games of the season at home including the annual White Out game against the Oregon Ducks will defeated them last year during the Big Ten Title game so certainly, revenge is on their minds.  

Another game that many Penn State fans will be eyeing on this season will be on November 1 as the Nittany Lions will travel to Columbus to face the Buckeyes.

But there is just one question that I would like to ask all of the Penn State fans. Could this be the year that the Nittany Lions finally get over the hump and win a National title?

We will all soon find out as Penn State football returns on August 30 as the Nittany Lions welcome the Nevada Wolfpack with game time of 3:30 p.m. and will air CBS.

Until Next Time!

We Are!