The proficiency that Ohio State showed Saturday in returning punts, a key factor in the Buckeyes' knocking Penn State out of the Rose Bowl picture, would lead some to believe that Joe Paterno was coming down hard this week on his special-teams coach.
That would be difficult, however.
The Nittany Lions don't have one.
"We haven't had that for years and years and years, if ever," the 82-year-old coach said yesterday during his weekly teleconference. "We've always had one guy coach this, one guy coach that. Everybody helps out. But we've never had a specialty-teams coach."
Asked his reasoning behind not having an assistant in charge of special teams, Paterno replied: "Because that's the way I like to do it.
"I grew up with that when I played in college," he said. "I grew up with that when I came here as an assistant coach. I think when they limit you to nine full-time [assistant] coaches, you've got to be careful you don't take one out of the mix doing nothing but working with specialty teams. You try to coordinate it so that you do have it."
A check of Big Ten coaching staffs shows that Penn State, Ohio State and Northwestern are the only schools without an assistant devoted at least part of the time to special teams. Most schools have an assistant coaching a position in addition to special teams.
In the Buckeyes' 24-7 victory, which dropped the Lions from 11th to 19th in the Associated Press poll, Ray Small set up a pair of touchdowns with punt returns of 41 and 45 yards. He averaged nearly 19 yards on nine returns.
Among 120 teams playing Division I-A football, the Nittany Lions are 115th in net punting (31.7 yards) and 117th in defending punt returns (16.5 yards).
Paterno said the issue is whether the staff spends enough time on special teams in practice and whether the 8-2 Lions have the right personnel. On the latter point, the coach said he decided he wanted to redshirt some of his more athletic freshmen instead of keeping them on the roster to play solely on special teams.
"If there's anything I would question, it's whether we have the best people in there," he said. "That partly is because I decided that I didn't want to use some young, good athletes early in the year, because I didn't want to just put them on a couple of special teams. It had to be my decision and that's the one I made, and it may not be right."
As for the current personnel, Paterno said he planned to go out for yesterday's practice "and challenge a couple guys a little bit so that we can find out whether we really have the right people in there." He said personnel changes were likely.
The Lions' kicking game will be challenged again Saturday against Indiana. The Hoosiers rank second in Big Ten games with a 12.2-yard average on punt returns. So that will cause some major anxiety on senior day at Beaver Stadium.
But Paterno said the problem is nothing that can't be fixed.
"You know, we haven't been bad on special teams through the years," he said. "Let's don't get carried away. I'm not about to change. I think we're doing fine."
Contact staff writer Joe Juliano at 215-854-4494 or jjuliano@phillynews.com.
