UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — James Frank­lin spoke in a more pos­i­tive man­ner Wed­nes­day about a Penn State player’s in­jury.

Un­like last week’s an­nounce­ment that de­fen­sive tackle and cap­tain PJ Mustipher is “out for the year,” Frank­lin dis­cussed quar­ter­back Sean Clif­ford’s re­turn to the prac­tice field.

He also touched on what to ex­pect from the Il­li­nois of­fense and the im­por­tance of fifth-year safety and cap­tain Jaquan Brisker to the Penn State de­fense, es­pe­cially in light of Mustipher’s in­jury. Here’s a quick break­down of these three per­ti­nent top­ics that came up af­ter the pen­ul­ti­mate tune-up be­fore fac­ing the Fight­ing Illini.

Come­back Clif­ford?

Andrew Destin

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After ex­it­ing a top-five matchup be­tween the Nit­t­any Lions and Iowa due to in­jury, Clif­ford was prac­tic­ing in pads. Ac­cord­ing to Frank­lin, Wed­nes­day was not the first day this week Clif­ford has thrown.

Fel­low quar­ter­backs Ta’Quan Rober­son and Chris­tian Veil­leux also were prac­tic­ing at full speed. The trio of Rober­son, Veil­leux and Clif­ford have been di­vid­ing up time as well with the first team, and it re­mains un­de­ter­mined who will be the starter Satur­day.

“Yeah, not sure at this stage, all three of them took reps — a third, a third, a third,” Frank­lin said. "We'll see. I don't know at this stage. But we'll see where [Clif­ford is] at by Satur­day. Hope­fully, ob­vi­ously, we’ll have an idea be­fore that. But it was good to see him be able to get some reps to­day at prac­tice, all three of them.”

In his third year start­ing at quar­ter­back, Clif­ford has de­liv­ered his best statis­ti­cal sea­son by far. He’s cur­rently com­plet­ing more than 66% of his passes and has 13 to­tal touch­downs against five in­ter­cep­tions.

Despite hav­ing Clif­ford back in a prac­tice jer­sey, the start­ing quar­ter­back sit­u­a­tion re­mains a fluid one for the Nit­t­any Lions.

“We’d like Sean back, so we’ll do what we have to do,” Frank­lin said. “We ob­vi­ously want to be able to in­vest our time where we think we’re go­ing to get the great­est re­turn.”

Flashy Fight­ing Illini

Il­li­nois won’t keep many op­pos­ing Big Ten coaches up at night, con­sid­er­ing it is just 2-5 with vic­to­ries over Ne­braska and Char­lotte. How­ever, Frank­lin has a lot of re­spect for two dy­namic, young Il­li­nois ath­letes in Josh McCray and Isa­iah Wil­liams.

McCray is sec­ond on the team in rush­ing yards, and Wil­liams leads the team in catches and yards while re­main­ing a dan­ger­ous threat in other as­pects of the of­fense.

“We bet­ter know where [Wil­liams] is,” Frank­lin said. “He gave us fits last year as a dy­namic guy that can do a lot of dif­fer­ent things as a re­ceiver, as a run­ning back, as a quar­ter­back off dou­ble passes, what­ever it may be. I think he’s a guy that you bet­ter be aware of.”

When Penn State beat Il­li­nois, 56-21, last year, Wil­liams was the Fight­ing Illini’s pri­mary quar­ter­back and threw for two touch­downs while rush­ing for over 100 yards. But this sea­son, Rut­gers trans­fer Ar­tur Sit­k­owski and Mich­i­gan trans­fer Bran­don Peters are split­ting time at quar­ter­back.

Bold Brisker

With Mustipher out, both a po­si­tional and vo­cal void has been left on the de­fense. Though he can’t take the tackle’s spot on the de­fen­sive line, Brisker has played at a level that has drawn na­tional at­ten­tion.

As some­body who listed his fa­vor­ite safe­ties as the likes of the late Sean Tay­lor, Earl Tho­mas and Ed Reed, the Gate­way High School grad­u­ate’s game has some­what rep­li­cated the afore­men­tioned trio as he’s been stel­lar in both the run and pass­ing games.

The for­mer Lack­awanna Col­lege stand­out is sec­ond on the team in in­ter­cep­tions with two and fifth on the team in tack­les.

“I’ve been re­ally pleased with [Brisker] in re­ally ev­ery area,” Frank­lin said. “He’s play­ing re­ally good for us, put­ting the team in po­si­tion to win. He’s be­come very vo­cal as a leader for us.”

An­drew Destin: ades­tin@post-ga­zette.com and Twit­ter @An­drewDestin1.

First Published: October 21, 2021, 11:00 a.m.