Inside Penn State QB Alex Manske's comeback from heart surgery; new preseason camp updates

Penn State quarterbacks are in the spotlight on this latest episode of the Lions 24-7 podcast.

Alex Manske's journey back from open heart surgery to preseason camp success is part of our conversation, and we get into it on Rocco Becht, who is putting together a really impressive, and Matt Campbell would call it, elite camp so far.

All that and other preseason updates coming your way right here on the Lions 24-7 podcast.

Welcome back into the Lions 24-7 podcast.

I am Tyler Donahue.

He is Daniel Gallin, and we got a lot to get into on this episode.

We have just come back from a visit to the Penn State practice facilities.

We didn't watch practice today, but we were inside the team meeting room, had a chance to chat with Matt Campbell, the head coach of these Nittany Lions, who is really getting close to his debut.

16 days away now until Marshall comes to Beaver Stadium for the season opener.

It was our eighth visit to the Lash building since preseason camp opened.

So big thank you again to Penn State for the access.

Beyond Matt Campbell, we had a chance to speak to some players and coaches, spent some time with Savon Huggins, who was the running backs coach.

So we'll talk about running backs a little bit later in this episode.

We're going to break down some of the Main points that we got from Matt Campbell at the podium, we asked a few questions from our Lions 24-7 crew, and the rest of the Penn State beat was able to get some good information out of Campbell as well.

We'll get into Rocco Beck and what he is accomplishing as QB1 with his new Nittany Lions squad, how he's emerging as a leader, how he has performed during preseason camp after being limited for much of spring ball.

We'll talk about the freshmen who are stepping up as potential impact players in year one.

There were three of them that Matt Campbell spotlighted with us.

And we'll also break down some injury returns and how guys have looked since getting back on the field.

But Daniel, we're going to begin this episode with the subject of quarterback Alex Manske.

We have circled him for quite some time here on the podcast about a really important piece of this roster, not just as a guy who's going to be next man up at quarterback in 2026 behind Rocco Beck, but could be the solution long term at the most important position in football.

He is only a redshirt freshman.

I know the redshirt conversation is going out the window, but generally what that means is he's got four years of eligibility on the table, including this one.

So he's got three years he could be playing college football beyond 2026.

They really think he's extremely talented.

Matt Campbell told us before they believed at the Iowa State staff that they believed that he was a top five quarterback in his recruiting class back in 2025. and ultimately he could be, again, that answer, keep you away from trying to search for a starting quarterback in the transfer portal.

We're going to get into that subject with Daniel right now because Manske goes beyond the plane.

It's finally out in the public setting now.

He had open heart surgery this spring.

That was why he was not on the field.

We'd kind of danced around that topic for the last several months, kept trying to hammer home that it wasn't a injury per se but this was a lot more relevant to his overall life and quality of life and daniel why don't we dive in wherever you want to start you had a story up at lines 24 7 on tuesday when we were given the green light to go public with this information you sat down with manske along with a small group of reporters last week at team facilities so Daniel's going to talk about that.

And I just want to make it very clear.

You are welcome to throw your questions.

Your topics are way.

We'll be keeping an eye on that from our commenters here, live up to the podcast.

And we'll work into those questions and topics a little bit later on the show.

But Daniel, fantastic job treating that story with the respect it deserved.

Where do we need to start for our audience here?