Penn State Football quarterback Sean Clifford practices ahead of Illinois game

Prior to Wednesday, Sean Clifford’s status of when he could return for Penn State Football was almost entirely up in the air.

So, there’s a chance Sean Clifford will be behind center for Penn State Football against Illinois, after all …

The Nittany Lions‘ quarterback was seen fully suited up and practicing today, evenly splitting reps with backups Ta’Quan Roberson and Christian Veilleux

It’s good to see Clifford out there breaking in those white cleats for the Generation of Greatness uniforms that Penn State Football will be wearing for their Homecoming game this weekend against Illinois.

However, it is still not clear whether the quarterback will be good to go in live game action, where he would risk taking more hits, by Saturday. Or even if he is good to go, does he? Or does Penn State Football head coach James Franklin not risk Clifford becoming re-injured, and just roll with one of the backups?

Franklin also said that this was not the first time this week that Clifford has practiced.

If Sean Clifford has been able to practice for most of the week, he would at the very least suit up and warm up for the game on Saturday … whether or not he plays at all is a different story.

There is plenty of debate whether or not he should play if he’s healthy, and either way if things go wrong, fans will criticize Franklin.

If Clifford plays and gets hurt again, he will be blamed for putting him out there. If he doesn’t play and things so south quickly with the backups, Franklin will also be blamed for not starting Clifford.

This team should be able to beat Illinois relatively easily even without their number one quarterback, so maybe it would be best to just give Clifford the afternoon off. However, if Clifford is healthy enough he will probably start, lets just hope that the Nittany Lions can jump out to an early lead and Franklin can get him out of there.

Not only would getting Clifford out early help prevent further injury, it would also give Roberson and Veilleux more reps just incase something goes wrong with Clifford later down the road.

Being that Roberson and Veilleux are both evenly splitting reps in practice, it seems that there is not much (if any) separation between the two. So it is very likely that we see both of them on Saturday, regardless of if Clifford starts or not.

Only time will tell what Sean Clifford’s role will look like for Penn State Football this weekend, but as long as he comes out of the weekend healthy and the Nittany Lions win, fans should be happy.