Alex Manske

Now, the depth, very questionable.

Alex Manske was a backup.

The other quarterback was playing in...

I don't know, a junior college last year? Division II.

So, you know, I don't know that there are great other options.

What are the options, I guess, at quarterback? And how much of what's been happening can you just point at this team and say, well, the quarterback hasn't been good enough?

Well, to address the depth, as you mentioned, it's Alex Manske and pretty much nobody else, at least nobody that's ready for this moment.

They have a freshman coming in, Casey Evans.

I'm going to go over to the quarterback, Rocco Beck.

Can he make his coach look good? Can he make his coach look smart? Can he make that loyalty really basically look validated on the field in Beaver Stadium because there's reporters like me who are asking questions about Alex Manske.

There's other reporters who are asking questions about Rocco Beck, and none of them really paint Beck in a good picture right now.

And if you want a bad picture of Beck, just go check out social media and the conversation going on around Penn State.

But he has a chance to get some positivity from the experience and validate that he should be the quarterback on the field because you have to wonder about the future.

He's down to his last five games of regular season eligibility.

You want to see him not just look good right now, but make you feel a little bit better about Alex Manske not seeing action or about not turning to a younger piece.

And the way he can do that is go out and play cleaner football, avoid some of these costly mistakes, and keep an eye on him, guys.

But even without this, I have to think they were planning for, I would hope anyway, planning for this contingency anyway, considering the legislation has been pushed by both conferences in Congress.

So yeah we'll see uh my initial reaction today though is just kind of shrug move on see what else comes of it but time will tell all right all right um one other thought from matt campbell today was asked i thought a good question um about alex manske and taylor mauser saying back in week one that you know it's gonna be hard to keep alex manske off the field and penn state has kept him off the field um and so i didn't have you pull this clip but matt what was yours so matt campbell essentially said it's not the physical part of it it's about keeping the guys that they that have deserved to play and have earned the right to play keeping them on the field and trying to get them to do The things they do best, as best as they can, as consistently as possible is the paraphrased version.

Yeah, so if you want Alex Manske on the field, you first want your base offense to be running.

So let's just kind of break it down.

Their run game isn't working, so anything they would do with a quarterback who isn't Rocco Becht on the field is going to be an obvious tell that they're trying to run the football.

And then if they're going to do some trick plays where they have Alex Manske on the field and one of those guys is going to throw the ball, you have a two-quarterback thing going on, your base plays aren't working.

So you don't have anything for the defense to react to.

This is where I actually give Taylor Mouser and the offensive staff here credit is because they don't just go to trick plays.

Penn State, Rocco Becht, he will be gone.

From everything I've heard, Alex Manske is not the guy.

And he is currently the backup.

And even if he was, again, you need depth.