Franklin and Trautwein surely realize how poorly Wallace played at OT during the 2021 season and his limited upside at OT, so I believe there is a very good chance, better than 50-50, that Wallace will not be the starting right side OT in 2022. Although Tengwall's long term future may be at Guard, he played better in the 3/4 of one game when he played OT as a true freshman than Wallace played in his 2nd year starting in his 3rd year at PSU. So I believe that the staff will look at Tengwall as an upgrade at OT in the near term with the other serious contender at OT being JB Nelson who enrolled in January. And I look for Wallace to battle for playing time inside along with Nourzad, Wormley, Achumba, Dawkins, and Effner. The wild card seems to be JB Nelson, who could go anywhere from being the starting right OT to redshirting. Hopefully Christ has made enough progress to be a serviceable backup OT in 2022, his 3rd year at PSU, which could allow Nelson to redshirt if he does not win the starting right OT job. Further depth at OT if Nelson redshirts would have to come from Traore and Effner, so it will be interesting to see what position they practice at this Spring.
I also don't believe Scruggs is a shoe in at Center, although he obviously has a leg up at the position even though he seemed to get pushed back into the pocket all too often in 2021. Surely with all the inside players on the roster there will be competition for the Center spot as well. Possibly Nourzad makes a run at the starting Center spot, or one of Achumba, Dawkins or even Effner, so I would handicap it at about a 2/3rds chance that Scruggs holds off the competition.
So I'm in the camp that sees a major OL shake up, and I'll go with a prediction of
Fashanu, Wormley, Nourzad/Scruggs splitting time, Wallace, Tengwall.
With JB Nelson enrolling for Spring and having a good chance to settle into the competition, he may just have the opportunity to start at right OT, which might result in an OL of Fashanu, Tengwall, Nourzad/Scruggs, Wallace, Nelson.
But the biggest positive I see in the OL going into 2022 is that there will be better competition at at least 4 of the 5 OL positions, with Fashanu about the only player that has a starting spot pretty much sewn up, than what Franklin's teams have had during his prior tenure at PSU. The last 8 years. Young players can and do make big jumps in performance from year to year and with more young olinemen on the roster than in recent years we could see a positive surprise or two right out of the gate in 2022.
