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Rahne opens up, puts human perspective on coaching

Commentary

A few weeks back, after a loss to Penn State, Pitt tight ends coach Tim Salem made news for saying he pretty much never leaves the office after losses and will sleep there for days on end.

Which is nuts, to be honest.

“When you lose a game, a little bit of you has died,” Salem said. “You do somewhat die when you lose a game.”

Good grief, man. We’re talking about sports here. If part of you is dying after a loss, you need to re-evaluate your life priorities.

Salem’s nuttiness and failure to sound like a real human being and husband didn’t end there. He followed up with this gem about not wanting to go home after a game, win or lose:

“When I go home late at night, it’s ‘Honey, can you change the light bulb? Can you move this out in the garage?’ No, I don’t want to change no light bulbs. I’m not moving nothing in the garage. So I don’t want to go home. I don’t have to do that stuff. They honey-do list is gone because I’m not there.”

What a keeper, huh ladies?

I couldn’t help but recall Salem’s warped view of life and where sports fit into it all on Thursday, after Penn State offensive coordinator Ricky Rahne spoke to reporters on a conference call.

Rahne has had a tough time of things lately, with the Nittany Lions losing back-to-back games and seeing their usually potent offense struggle. Rahne has been heavily criticized the past two weeks for the offensive problems and his poor play calling at times.

Rahne was asked at one point Thursday if he’s a sleep-in-the-office kind of guy.

Compare his phenomenal answer to the neanderthal way of thinking up above from Salem.

“I never sleep at the office ’cause I only live five minutes away,” Rahne said. “I think it’s important that my two boys know that their mother is the most important thing in my life.”

There are a lot of Penn State football fans who want to hear from Rahne about what’s gone wrong with the offense lately. He spoke to the full Penn State beat for the first time this season Thursday and addressed a number of football issues while providing some context, but for me, that line about his sons and their mother stood out the most.

Sports are played and coached by human beings, not robots. These folks have personal lives away from the games, and if we are supposed to trust their judgment on the playing field, it can be good to know that they are coming from a healthy place mentally and that they have the proper perspective on what truly is important.

Before getting into the football nitty gritty, I first want to commend Rahne for straying from the machismo that we so often come to expect in sports and providing such a refreshing answer, unlike the Pitt coach’s total nonsense.

At the end of the day, Rahne will be judged at Penn State on the overall offense and his play calling. He gets that. He does go home to sleep, but he admitted, “I can’t tell you that I slept really well when I was at home.

“I hold myself to a high standard,” the former Cornell quarterback said. “I’m as hard on myself as any fan or critic. Obviously, when things don’t go exactly how you want it to go, you look and evaluate and try to get better.”

Rahne is a smart guy, and he fully understands why Penn State fans are angry. The Lions were leading the country in scoring three weeks ago at 55.5 points per game, then lost 27-26 to Ohio State in a game that included a horrible fourth-down call by Rahne in the closing minutes, and then lost 21-17 to Michigan State and looked as bad offensively as they’ve looked in more than two years.

“I told somebody this the other day: I have the greatest job in the world, and the reason is the passionate fans,” Rahne said. “We’re able to recruit great players and those sort of things because people want to play in front of 107,000 people. I respect the fans’ frustrations.”

This is Rahne’s first season as offensive coordinator after replacing Joe Moorhead, who left to become head coach at Mississippi State. James Franklin stayed in-house by hiring Rahne because he felt it would keep everyone on the same page, including quarterback Trace McSorley, who was recruited by Rahne.

There’s no question Rahne had big shoes to fill because Moorhead was so successful, and there clearly have been growing pains.

“I think we ask our kids here all the time (about growing pains),” Rahne said. “I remember a few years ago, we don’t come out on top against Pitt, and we asked DaeSean Hamilton and all those guys to grow from that experience.

“As a coach, it’s easy to ask others to do something like that, but it can be a challenge to do it yourself. So that’s what I try to do, maintain a confidence, make sure that we all know that I am growing, and every single guy on our team is, even Trace McSorley. I need to make sure that I continue to grow from a number of different areas, and I hope to do that until the end of my career.”

The biggest issue with Penn State’s offense the past two games has been a significant dropoff in the passing game. The receiving corps has been let down by veterans who have dropped a lot of passes and failed to get open for McSorley, and the Buckeyes and Spartans exploited that.

“I think that probably the biggest change over the past three years is, we’ve been able to create a bunch of explosive plays in a variety of ways,” Rahne said. “I think that’s been a key factor in our success, those explosive plays. That’s the thing we need to continue to focus on and executing those opportunities when they’re there.”

Rahne said he’s working as hard as he can, short of sleeping in the office, to correct the problems. He mentioned things such as the offense needs to get into a “rhythm,” that he needs to stay aggressive with his play calling and that running back Miles Sanders needs to be more involved in the passing game.

Rahne isn’t passing the buck on any of the struggles.

“Obviously there are times when I look back and there are playcalls that I wish I could have back,” he said.

That’s for sure.

But all of this, really, should have been expected. Rahne is not Moorhead. He doesn’t have anywhere near the experience calling plays. And yes, it’s unfortunate that his growing pains have come in two gut-wrenching losses that derailed Penn State’s biggest goals this season.

What Rahne has to do is learn from all of this and … be better.

And he knows it.

¯¯¯

Cory Giger covers Penn State football from the Altoona Mirror.

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