The 3 Penn State football players who need the bye week the most

After a 6-0 start, that included a nail-biter in LA last week, Penn State is heading into its second bye week ranked No. 3 in the nation. Coming out of the Week 8 bye, the Nittany Lions will head to Madison to face a red-hot Wisconsin team that appears to be turning the corner offensively with sophomore quarterback Braedyn Locke, who replaced injured veteran transfer Tyler Van Dyke against Alabama in Week 3. Most importantly, head coach James Franklin’s team will need to be sure it doesn’t get caught looking ahead to a Week 10 matchup with Ohio State at Beaver Stadium. 

But that’s all in the future. In the now, Penn State will remain unbeaten and considered one of the best teams in the country. Its only tasks this Saturday will be to get and stay healthy, and maybe to get a few struggling players back on track. The whole team deserves it, but nobody needs the week off, more than these three players. 

I’m not sure there’s much that Tyler Warren has to improve about his game during Penn State’s Week 8 bye. He’s already proven he can play quarterback, running back, fullback, wide receiver, and center, along with being the best tight end in the country, but I’m sure he could just use a breather. 

First-year offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki recognized the mismatch that Warren presented to the USC secondary, especially with 6-foot-6 linebacker Eric Gentry out for the season. So, Kotelnicki funneled Warren designed touches, on top of the ones that quarterback Drew Allar fed him through his typical progression. The senior tight end saw 20 targets in Week 7 and caught 17 of them (tying an FBS record for a tight end) for 224 yards (the second most in Penn State program history) and a touchdown. He also had one rushing attempt for four yards on a QB sneak and attempted a pass. 

Warren is a remarkable player with insane versatility and he’s become the fulcrum of Kotelnicki’s offense. If Warren goes down with an injury, I’m not sure the unit could survive it and still be functional, so here’s hoping he’s spending this week in an ice bath or a hot tub or bubble wrap or is cryogenically frozen and only thawed out on gameday. 

One of the reasons that first-year defensive coordinator Tom Allen had to feel emboldened enough to move Abdul Carter from linebacker to defensive end was the promise that sophomore linebacker Tony Rojas showed in his first year on campus. Rojas took over as Penn State’s starting inside linebacker next to Kobe King and was excellent at the start of the season, but he’s been on a downhill trajectory since. 

Rojas missed seven tackles across the first three weeks of the season, and while he’s begun to shore up that part of his game, opposing offenses are learning they can pick on the 6-foot-2, 236-pound linebacker in coverage. USC quarterback Miller Moss targeted Rojas in coverage five times in Week 7, and the five different USC pass-catchers hauled in four of those targets for 40 yards, three first downs, and a touchdown. 

UCLA had a similar gameplan the week prior, also targeting Rojas in coverage five times. Lincoln Riley also attacked Rojas with plenty of misdirection, understanding that the young linebacker would be a step slow if he couldn’t trust his eyes. He got lost in the wash on that screen pass, but his most egregious misstep came on and end-around with a fake double-reverse. 

Whether USC running back Quinton Joyner keeps this ball or pitches it to dynamic wide receiver Zachariah Branch, Rojas is responsible for the running back and needs to pursue with real urgency. Instead, he’s taking short choppy steps, filtering Joyner right to his blockers and letting him get to his breakaway speed in a hurry. 

Rojas is a good player and will continue to grow, but right now, he’s veering toward a defensive liability. Hopefully, if there’s a nagging injury making him a step slow, it’ll have time to heal over the bye week, and if not, Allen, who is not just the DC but also the linebackers coach, will need to spend much of the week in the film room with Rojas, getting him to play fast again. 

In 2023, Nick Singleton lacked the breakaway speed that made him a star as a true freshman the year prior. He finished the 2023 season with just nine runs over 15+ yards and just 22.4% of his yardage coming on those “breakaway” runs. Through the first three games of Singleton’s junior season under Kotelnicki, he totaled seven 15+ yard runs and 195 “breakaway yards” on those runs. Since Week 4, however, Singleton’s longest run is 14 yards against Illinois and he missed Penn State’s win over UCLA with an undisclosed injury. 

Against USC’s maligned run defense, Singleton only managed 26 yards on 10 attempts and didn’t look like himself. It’s clear that whatever injury kept him off the field in Week 6, hampered him in Week 7, and if Penn State can’t produce explosive plays on the ground, that puts even more pressure on Drew Allar to carry the offense despite his underwhelming receiving corps. 

This bye week will be crucial for Singleton because if he can start to look like the player who ran for 113 yards on just 13 carries in Week 1 against West Virginia, then the Nittany Lions could have a chance to run the table in the Big Ten.