Penn State C Nick Dawkins Describes What SMU is Walking Into

Penn State C Nick Dawkins before the game

Every Penn State player is psyched for this game, and Dawkins is perhaps even more excited than most.

Dawkins is in his fifth season at Penn State, and over the first four years, he played a total of 213 snaps per Pro Football Focus.

With Juice Scruggs being the man at center in 2022 and Hunter Nourzad succeeding him in 2023, there wasn’t much room for Dawkins.

This season, a door opened, and he’s run through it, starting each of Penn State’s first 13 games.

It’s not nearly as usual as it used to be for a player to stay at one institution for five seasons, and it’s paying off for Dawkins.

“I came to Penn State to play for Coach Franklin,” Dawkins told reporters Monday, “the kind of man he is, the coach he is, and the general person that he is is the reason why I came to Penn State.”

“This is exactly why I came here, why I came to Penn State, to play, to start to contribute in a serious manner,” Dawkins said. “When that is asked of you, you don’t really have, for the moment, to start the back pedal. You get up and you do what you’re supposed to do for the guys in the room, for the guys that are in the team meeting room, for everybody, and that’s involved with this program.”

A WORD FROM THE OTHER SIDE

CHARLOTTE, NC – DECEMBER 07: SMU Mustangs running back Brashard Smith (1) is surrounded by several Clemson defenders during the ACC championship football game between the SMU Mustangs and the Clemson Tigers on December 7, 2024 at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte N.C. (Photo by John Byrum/Icon Sportswire)

The weather is supposed to be, well, cold.

As hard it may be to believe for a late-December afternoon in Central Pennsylvania, the forecast calls for 25 degrees and sunny during the game per the Weather Channel.

Lashlee gave an honest take on how the Texas-based Mustangs are going to handle the weather.

“Weather is only going to be a problem if we allow it to be, you know,” Lashlee said on The Pat McAfee Show. “Like we’ve told our guys, they all want to play in the NFL, right? Well, we’re getting into that playoff time of year in the NFL, shortly into December and January, where the playoffs are going to go through Arrowhead and they’re going to go through Buffalo, and they’re going to go through Green Bay. And so you have to be able to go on the road and play at those places, or you play for those teams if you want to play championship, playoff football at the next level. So we get an opportunity to do that in college this week.”

Penn State-SMU is scheduled to kick off at noon on TNT and HBO Max.