STATE COLLEGE, PA—Members of the Penn State football coaching staff revealed to reporters Friday that they have no idea what to do with the unbelievably innovative defensive playbooks former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky continues to send them on a regular basis.
Sandusky, who is currently serving a 30-to-60-year prison sentence after being found guilty of sexually abusing young boys over the span of decades while coaching at Penn State, has reportedly mailed the Nittany Lions an extensive library of defensive schemes, formations, and plays that the team’s current coaches reluctantly admitted are “absolutely groundbreaking” and “virtually unstoppable.”
“We started getting these envelopes from Jerry Sandusky in the mail a few years ago, and we just discarded them at first,” said Penn State head coach James Franklin, adding that no one within the program or university had reached out to or otherwise been in contact with Sandusky to solicit the packages, nor have they ever responded. “But he kept on sending them, and when we eventually opened one up, we found the most incredible and revolutionary defensive ideas that any of us had ever seen. This stuff makes the 1985 Bears and the Steelers’ ‘Steel Curtain’ look like nothing. I’m telling you, these schemes would change the way people think about defense in football forever.”
“Jerry Sandusky is a sick, despicable human being who deserves to be in jail for the rest of his life,” Franklin continued. “But I have to say, he is also possibly the most brilliant defensive mind in the history of football.”
According to sources, Sandusky first began mailing Penn State new playbooks from his Greene County, PA supermax prison in late 2012 when Bill O’Brien was still the team’s head coach, and he has since sent hand-drawn play designs to the university on a near-weekly basis. The packages are said to usually contain handwritten messages in which the 72-year-old convicted child molester congratulates the team on a recent win, wishes them luck in their next game, or offers lengthy analysis of an upcoming opponent.
Several playbooks were reportedly accompanied by Post-it notes that simply read “Just some new plays I came up with while I was bored,” next to a scribbled smiley face.
“Penn State fully accepts its role in failing to do more to prevent the sexual abuse of so many innocent children,” Penn State assistant head coach Terry Smith told reporters while staring intently at one of Sandusky’s new hybrid 4-3 Under/4-2-5 defensive schemes, in which a free safety overloads the offense’s weak side to generate pressure and eliminate screen passes. “The thoughts and support of everyone at Penn State will always be with the victims and their—my God, just look at this zone blitz here. I’ve been coaching for 20 years, and I’ve never seen anyone use a nickleback like that before. And the way he uses the linebackers to contain the pocket against a mobile quarterback—it’s beautiful. This would get you a sack or an interception nine times out of 10. Honestly, this is the type of play that wins you a national championship.”
Added Smith, after abruptly clearing his throat and closing the playbook, “Penn State continues to be committed to building greater awareness of child sexual abuse and the ways to prevent it.”
While adamant that they have not employed any of the defensive ideas sent by Sandusky, Penn State coaches told reporters that the schemes would “shut out any offense in the country” and admitted that the team “sure as hell could have used some of those plays” during their 49-10 loss to the University of Michigan earlier in the season. The coaching staff also confirmed that they have kept all of Sandusky’s playbooks locked in their offices “just so no other team gets ahold of them.”
“Looking at these coverage shells, at a certain point, you’d have to be an idiot not to use them,” said defensive coordinator Brent Pry, adding that Sandusky’s most recently mailed defensive playbook would “demolish” the University of Wisconsin’s rushing attack during Saturday’s Big Ten championship game. “Look, I’m not saying we will use them. I’m just saying, hypothetically, if we did use maybe one or two of them, would that be the end of the world? I mean, it’d be a shame to just let these amazing plays go to waste.”
“You know what, we might as well just use them,” Pry added. “After all, that’s what Coach Paterno would have done.”