Why Penn State’s offensive line could pave the way to a national title in 2025
It wasn’t that long ago that James Franklin stood at the podium in Indianapolis at the 2022 Big Ten Media Days and put the Penn State offensive line in the spotlight.
“O-line is the group that we come and talk about every single year, and I tell you this is going to be the year for the next step at that position,” Penn State’s head coach said in 2022. “I’m not going to do that this year. I’m going to let them prove that to you on the field.”
That came after nearly a decade of futility in the trenches for Penn State. The Nittany Lions struggled to put together a quality offensive line since Franklin arrived in 2014, largely due to the NCAA sanctions that allowed players to transfer without penalty (a foreign concept at the time) and limited the team’s scholarship count.
Franklin’s 2022 comments were one of the last times the quality of the group came into question — and now the offensive line is one of the best in the country heading into the 2025 season.
“Totally changed,” Franklin said about the offensive line Saturday at local media day. “When I got here, people just brushed this over like no big deal. But we had four offensive linemen, I think was the number when I got here, in the entire program.”
The growth to that point took some time — a lot of time. The offensive line struggled for years, playing catch-up from when it fell behind from the sanctions, with multiple o-line coaches failing to orchestrate the turnaround. But in 2020 Phil Trautwein was hired to coach the group, and that ignited the turnaround.
Trautwein, who remains the offensive line coach, may not have been around when Franklin first got to campus, but he knows just how bad the offensive line situation was.
“It’s just crazy,” Trautwein said Saturday. “I mean, a lot of that was going to the sanctions and everything. But hats off to Coach Franklin. I’ve been lucky enough to develop and coach some really good guys, and it’s kind of cool to see where you come from.”
Now the group, unlike those early years and unlike 2022, rarely gets mentioned. While that could be a negative for other position groups, it’s primarily a positive for the offensive line.
Most of the time, linemen go unnoticed unless they’re the reason for failure on any particular play. That comes with the territory — a lack of praise and plenty of criticism. And the players know it.
“We only get talked about if we’re doing something wrong,” Penn State offensive tackle Drew Shelton said. “That is what it is as an offensive line. If we go a game not being noticed, that’s a good thing. That’s how we think of it.”
They’re fine with that. And it’s easier to accept when Trautwein has helped develop a group that is among the best in the nation. He has six players who could reasonably start, and all would be considered high-level starters.
That’s a far cry from when the team was switching defensive linemen to the offense and starting them back in 2014. Trautwein knows there’s something to be said for that progress — although he’s not ready to say the job is done.
“I’m happy that we’re at where we’re at,” Trautwein said, “but I won’t really be satisfied until we are the best, and we just have to keep getting better.”
That’s part of how the group has improved so consistently. Trautwein has pushed each step of the way to go from good to great to elite. But just how close are they to being the best in his eyes?
“Not close enough,” he said. “I’m never going to be close enough. And that’s not going to change anything. I don’t really think that way. I just try to be the best. ... And even when we are, I’m still going to say, we need to work on this, we need to be better at that. ... Just making sure we always have that chip on our shoulder and we outwork everybody.”
That chase to be the best is what keeps the Nittany Lions improving up front. They’ve gone from a major negative to inconsistent to elite on the offensive line over the last 10+ years.
The group is so good that it’s now a part of the culture on offense — a unit that beats its opponent into submission with physicality, led by the group in the trenches. And those are the types of offensive lines that get noticed. The ones that can lead a team to a national title. Very few get there. Michigan’s 2023 o-line is a good recent example. That team won a national title and its offensive line paved the way.
And this season Penn State’s could do the same.
