Penn State dominated Maryland this past Saturday despite not having one of its best players.
This week’s game is expected to be a much tougher challenge, and coach James Franklin provided encourging news in his latest presser.
Franklin said that the team’s “hopeful” to have star defensive end Chop Robinson back in the fold.
Robinson inspired his team Saturday despite not playing. The game was at Maryland, which is Robinson’s home state and, for his first college season, was his home school as well. Despite being ruled out and not being on the travel roster, Penn State was able to travel him due to a waiver.
Franklin’s also hopeful to have fellow defensive end Amin Vanover back.
As for Chop, Franklin spoke about his impact after Saturday’s game.
“We traveled him from a rehab standpoint,” he said. “There’s certain things when you have certain injuries that you have to do to work back and be able to get back on the field. So being able to get him out, being able to run him, being able to get some movement stuff without any contact is part of his kind of protocol to come back. So that’s why we were able to do that. As you guys know, in the old days, that may be in a little bit of like trying to kind of hide whose healthy and who’s not. But we have to turn that information, so we weren’t kind of doing that.”
Overall, Franklin feels Robinson motivated Penn State even though he didn’t get to play at Maryland.
“We wanted to play well not only for Penn State but also for Chop,” Franklin said. “We wanted him to understand that we were playing well for him.”
Penn State’s defense still picked up five sacks and allowed -49 yards rushing at Maryland. But, there’s no question that Robinson and Vanover make the unit better.
