STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- As the Nittany Lions get ready to usher out their senior class ahead of their final home game of the season, cornerbacks coach Terry Smith will watch as his meeting room will lose two starters here in the coming months.
With cornerbacks Grant Haley and Christian Campbell both wrapping up their collegiate careers in four years, they'll join senior safeties Marcus Allen and Troy Apke as the Penn State secondary will go through another overhaul this offseason. It's the never-ending challenge of college football where filling voids is determined by landing prized recruits and developing that talent however soon it may be needed to contribute.
When Haley and Campbell walk through the Beaver Stadium tunnel Saturday afternoon and greet their families on the field, they'll do so knowing that in about six weeks they'll head off to start the next part of their careers, but those stepping into their roles in the offseason have already proven to be more than capable. That makes is a little bit easier for Haley, a mainstay on the back end, to depart.
"The future of the secondary, especially of the corners is very bright," Haley said this week. "You've got leaders coming back, guys who are contributing big minutes this year. I think that's part of Coach Smith's process. He's going to play freshmen because he wants them to be able to keep growing each and every year so the speed slows down and so it almost gets back to playing like your senior year of high school where you just felt like you were the man and I think that's just part of the process. Leaving the corners, it's bittersweet."
Penn State is losing two starters who made significant contributions, but they already have two more starters ready to roll out.
Penn State views redshirt junior Amani Oruwariye as a third starter and his number of snaps played this season, 50 percent of the defense's snaps, is close enough to Haley's 66 percent and Campbell's 64 percent to dictate that. James Franklin said last week that Oruwariye will be back for his fifth year and given the rangy corner's knack for the ball -- with a team-best four interceptions -- they have one key piece ready for the future.
There's also the pending return of John Reid, who started opposite Haley last season and was in line to do so this year before sustaining a season-ending knee injury in spring practice. Reid has two years of eligibility remaining and while he was an instrumental part of Penn State's Big Ten title run last season, he's spent this year helping to mentor all the cornerbacks while still attending meetings and even traveling for every road game where he helps with the defense's signals.
"We want to make sure John is 100 percent come next fall," Smith said Thursday. "That’s most important and so far he’s far ahead of schedule. Obviously as we all have come to know with John he a guy works harder than anyone. … He’s pounding the weight room. He's bigger, stronger and he's gonna come back faster than ever. He’s dialed in and locked in. He’s still in every positional meeting, every unit meeting, he’s out there on the practice field so he’s staying connected. He helps us on sideline on game day and asks questions as if he were playing. He’s been awesome. He is great to have in our program and he's the kind of guy that we would recruit 100 out of 100 times.”
Reid's absence, plus the upside the staff saw in two promising newcomers, resulted in Lamont Wade and Tariq Castro-Fields both burning their redshirts this season. With Wade and Castro-Fields playing 20 and 21 percent of the defense's snaps so far this season, they too should be more comfortable in expanded roles next season. As Oruwariye played more snaps last week against Rutgers than Campbell and with Wade and Castro-Fields still holding down their roles, there's plenty of glimpses of the future of the cornerback position and likely will be again on Saturday against Nebraska.
"Lamont Wade's freshman season is playing out very similar to Grant Haley’s freshman year," Smith said. "Lamont has become really, really important to us on special teams. He makes a ton of plays on special teams and he’s played a significant role with us on the defensive end as well. His role is going to continue to grow for us. Lamont is a super smart kid. You tell him once and he absorbs that information and is able to process that information. Obviously he’s a good athlete, he’s tough and he's the ultimate competitor."
While Smith said Castro-Field's freshman year is more similar to Reid's, which is also a compliment given the impact Reid's made since stepping on campus, Castro-Field's biggest improvement this season has been is recognition of opposing offenses. As he gets more comfortable and figures out how different personnel formations could attack the defense it's resulted in fewer mental errors. That makes Smith more comfortable putting him out there.
There's a lot to like about the deep crop of cornerbacks, but what Campbell and Haley did, both playing right away as true freshmen out of necessity -- and taking a gamble on Penn State by following their previously established relationships with Franklin's coaching staff to Penn State -- certainly helped Penn State pave the way to landing elite corners like Wade and Castro-Fields.
"There's been so many great moments because he's played a lot of football for us for a lot of years," Smith said of Haley. "Last year the Ohio State moment was a pivotal point in our season. It really kind of changed the program. For him, that'll be one of the high moments of his career, scoring the game-winning touchdown, but he's just played so much football and there were a lot of great moments. He's just an awesome kid to be around."