Penn State Football: 3 position battles to watch this spring

1. Quarterback Battle could be decided by the end of spring?

The headliner position battle will be at quarterback, where Sean Clifford will most likely need to fend off redshirt sophomore Ta’Quan Roberson to keep the job.

New offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich was brought in to bring the offense back to more of what they looked like in 2016-2017, a spread attack based off of explosive plays. Both Clifford and Roberson fit the mold of a pocket passer that should succeed in Yurcich’s new scheme.

Clifford was up and down last season bitten by the turnover bug to often, but did throw for over 1,800 yards and 16 touchdowns in eight starts last season. Clifford settled in after being benched and once Keyvone Lee sparked the running game he looked more like the quarterback we saw in 2019.

Roberson is a former four star recruit but has only attempted one pass in his collegiate career and will be attempting to take the job from a quarterback who has 20 starts under his belt. Roberson remains a virtual unknown at this point as we have not heard the staff talk much about him and have only seen him for a handful of snaps through his first two years on campus.

In an interview with the Lions247 podcast, former tight end Pat Freiermuth said that he has had a great relationship with Ta’Qua since he got to Happy Valley, but did let us in a little when he mentioned that Roberson struggled with what he called “football IQ” when get got to campus.

He noted that Roberson has significantly improved on this through his first two years, and we do know that the former New Jersey standout is a perfect 4.0 GPA student in the classroom. However, could his struggles to pick up the offense be the reason we did not see him at all even during an 0-5 start lest season?

It is very possible that Franklin felt he was not ready mentally, and it will be interesting to see how quickly he picks up the Yurcich offense this spring.

Franklin mentioned on Monday that he would like to have a quarterback depth chart after spring practice ends, which was telling that he wants to have a direction for this offense heading into the summer and fall camp.

It seems it would be tough for Roberson to unseat Clifford in just 15 practices this spring.