'We Forgot How to Have Fun'

Penn State running backs coach Ja'Juan Seider sat atop the world last December, leading a position room blooming with talent and newfound experience.

Six plays into the 2020 season, Seider had a completely different room, and his coaching ethos changed with it. Now, Seider is trying to recapture the approach, if not the room, he had last year.

"I think this is huge: We've got to go have fun," Seider said this week. "Through this whole process, we forgot how to have fun."

Penn State (0-3) visits Nebraska on Saturday in what has become an inflection point for the program. Their championship hopes likely dissolved, the Lions now are playing to win games and eliminate the bilious taste of their first three weeks.

At running back, the emotional struggle has been acute but understandable. This week, Journey Brown announced that he is retiring from football because of a heart condition, ending a career his coaches thought was about to soar.

Head coach James Franklin called the news "heartbreaking," and Seider marveled that Brown "deals with so much adversity and never lets it break him." Last Saturday, before the Penn State-Maryland game, Brown danced along the sideline, hugging nearly every teammate and staff member who walked by.

Brown will continue to do that as part of Penn State's travel roster, serving as a de facto assistant coach. That makes Seider feel better, because, as the coach said, "when he comes around you, the day gets brighter."

"He's done a tremendous job helping young guys who were coming in here with the mindset of probably not playing and trying to get them to understand what's the now right now," Seider said. "So he's doing a great job monitoring and mentoring them. Because the cool thing for him is, he finally felt like he was Saquon [Barkley] or Miles [Sanders].

"You know, I'm the big guy in the room. I'm the big brother that these young guys want to look up to. And not just the running back room, because everybody will tell you in this whole program that he affected everybody, every position. That's the type of kid he is."

Couple Brown's situation with that of Noah Cain, who sustained a season-ending injury on Penn State's first series against Indiana, and Seider's job grew more difficult. He not only had to prepare a new starter in Devyn Ford but also needed to accelerate the development of freshmen Keyvone Lee and Caziah Holmes.

It took a toll. Seider said losing two backs with NFL potential has been difficult to overcome. Penn State ranks 10th in the Big Ten in rushing yards per game (129.33) and yards per carry (3.37).

But quarterback Sean Clifford leads the team in rushing attempts and yards; Clifford has taken 45 percent of the team's carries, something Seider certainly did not expect before the season.

"I'm not going to sugarcoat it; it's been tough," Seider said. "... You try not to take it home because, at the end of the day, I don't want to feel sorry for myself, because of what the kids are going through. So I've got to be strong for them at the same time. But it's tough. You go from probably being the best running back room in the country to potentially playing with a bunch of young guys."

But this week, Seider said he sensed a change. On Tuesday, Franklin conducted his first in-person team meeting of the season, something the head coach felt benefitted everyone around him.

Seider also made a change. He felt as though he had been "probably pressing" too much, in part because of how much his position group had changed.

Seider also felt he had been guilty of coaching without joy. On Tuesday, he told Franklin that was over.

"For the first time, I coached like I was coaching previously," Seider said. "I felt like I could take the training wheels off the kids and I could coach them, I could push them.

"... I can take the blinders off and I can be free a little bit, because I'm so consumed with trying to coach every detail with the young guys. Just trying to make them right because everything changed every week, every day with every look. ... If we get back to having fun, we've got good players, we still know how to freaking coach. We've just got to do it, and it's time for us to hit the switch and do it together."

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