Guiding force

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Jeff Rice

A lot of college football players, especially the quarterbacks, bristle when talk of legacies is brought up. They would rather focus on the game at hand or the games further up the road.

But Penn State quarterback Daryll Clark takes his and his team’s place in Nittany Lion history very seriously, and knows that the Capital One Bowl matchup with LSU on Jan. 1 will write an important part of both of those legacies.

AP file photo

Over the last two seasons, Penn State quarterback Daryll Clark has completed 61 percent of his passes for 5,379 yards and 42 touchdowns with 16 interceptions, while also helping the Nittany Lions to two straight New Year’s Day bowl games.

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“There’s a lot being said about us not being able to win the big game or anything like that,” Clark said. “We’ve asked for a big game and we’ve asked for a worthy opponent, a really good opponent, and we’ve found it in LSU. For us to win this game would mean a lot for this program, for the fans, for us.”

The 6-foot-3 senior from Youngstown, Ohio, who will conclude his second year as a starter as the owner of two career and three single-season school passing records. The Nittany Lions (10-2) have won 21 of the 25 games he has started but have only four wins against ranked teams in those games.

A two-time all-Big Ten first-team selection, Clark won the Chicago Tribune’s Silver Football Award (sharing it with Michigan defensive end Brandon Graham) for the conference’s best player. He has thrown for 5,379 yards, 42 touchdowns and 16 interceptions and completed 61 percent of his passes in the last two years to two different groups of wide receivers behind two very different offensive lines.

“I owe that to the coaches for putting the entire offense in position to make plays,” he said.

Clark has also been the chief component of an offense that has undergone serious changes in style since the start of 2008. A big part of that offense last season was Clark’s running ability, which gave opposing defenses something else to account for in addition to the threats of multiple wide receivers and tailbacks Evan Royster and Stephfon Green.

But the Nittany Lions, with a few exceptions, kept Clark in the pocket this season. Head coach Joe Paterno said he didn’t want to risk injury to his starter with freshmen Kevin Newsome and Matt McGloin as Clark’s only backups.

Is there a chance a few of those running plays will leak back into the playbook in Orlando against an LSU defense that’s allowed just 18 touchdowns this season?

“I hope so,” Clark said. “I’ve been talking to (Penn State quarterbacks coach) Jay (Paterno) about it. He’s had some ideas. We’ll work accordingly as more film is broken down. We’ll do what it takes to get the win.”

Clark said Friday that his performance in the 2007 Alamo Bowl, when he ran for 50 yards and a key touchdown on six carries, sent his confidence “through the roof.” Both he and Paterno were asked if the Nittany Lions were planning a similar package for Newsome, who saw action in just three of Penn State’s last five games and totaled 11 pass attempts and 20 carries on the season.

“He’s made tremendous strides since he’s been here,” Clark said. “It would work wonders for his confidence if we were to actually put (a package) in and for him to actually do well with it.”

But the head coach, who had received similar questions about his backup for much of the season, said Newsome’s situation is different from Clark’s.

“Clark had been around and I had seen him grow and I thought he was ready to play some,” Paterno said. “I didn’t think he was ready to play; Jay thought he was ready to play, and for this very reason: I just didn’t want to stick him in there too soon.

“I think that was my mistake with Clark; whether it’s my mistake with Newsome, I don’t think so. They are two different tales. There’s a tale of a kid that’s really, you know, been around us long enough to know what’s going to happen, and another kid that’s really just learning.”

Unlike most of his teammates, Clark said he has watched a lot of film on the Tigers in the past week and expects their defense to present some problems.

“They definitely fly around,” he said. “They have a lot of skill on the defensive line as well as the secondary and they’re well-disciplined. They make a lot of plays. They held Florida to 13 points, so they’re definitely going to be a handful.”