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Sunday, August 19, 2001

By Ray Fittipaldo, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Eddie Drummond's junior season at Penn State was one to forget. Drummond's right knee was injured on the second play of the season opener against Southern California, and he didn't play at full strength the rest of the season.

Eddie Drummond caught 29 passes for 365 yards last season. (Lake Fong, Post-Gazette)

In the spring, Drummond, a wide receiver from East Liberty, did not practice much because of an uncertain academic situation. As a result, he lost his starting split end position to Tony Johnson and entered camp third-string behind freshman Ryan Scott.

That's a long way to fall for someone who was viewed as the program's most dangerous player a year ago.

But after a strong summer program -- in summer school and during voluntary football workouts -- and a strong training camp, Drummond won't be a bystander in his final season. It's unclear whether he will reestablish himself as a starter, and the coaching staff has decided that Drummond won't be looked to for the big play as much as he was the past two seasons.

"He's having a great camp," Penn State receivers coach Kenny Carter said. "He's in really good shape. He boosted himself a great deal with a tremendous summer school session. That helped him a bunch. He put himself in a great situation academically and is back on track to graduate. He's doing the right things off the field, and he's looking to have a great season on the field. He's becoming more of a complete person."

Drummond, the team's fastest player with 4.35 speed, was expected to be the offense's big-play receiver last season. But after his knee injury, Drummond never got back to full strength. He caught 29 passes for 365 yards, which was second on the team behind tight end Tony Stewart, but he did not score. As a sophomore, Drummond (5-9, 185 pounds) showed signs of his big-play capability when he caught 35 passes for 652 yards and scored five times.

While happy with Drummond's play in camp, Carter has been equally pleased with Johnson, a sophomore, and junior Bryant Johnson, the starting flanker.

"Eddie will compete to start," said Carter, who coached the wide receivers at Pitt last season. "Eddie has a lot of talent. But Tony is having a good camp, too. Eddie won't just play [split end], he will play [flanker], too. We'll put him in situations where he can make things happen. Eddie has tremendous speed and ability."

But the coaching staff has decided not to put the onus of the passing offense on Drummond.

"He's not going to be our only go-to guy," Carter said. "We're going to have a couple of go-to guys. We're going to get the ball in Eddie's hands, but we're going to get the ball in several people's hands. It's going to help us. People aren't going to be able to say, 'we'll just double Drummond.' They're going to have to take care of a lot of people, and it won't put as much pressure on Eddie."

That's a change from last season when the coaching staff wanted Drummond to be the offense's chief playmaker. Heading into the opener against Southern California, Paterno said he wanted to get the ball in Drummond's hands 15-18 times that game. To wit, the first offensive play call was a reverse to Drummond. Then he was injured.

After sitting out two games with the knee injury, Drummond returned to the starting lineup against Pitt at Three Rivers Stadium and caught eight passes in a 12-0 loss, but that marked his season high. In the remaining eight games, Drummond caught more than three passes just once. Whether it was the injury or the multitude of problems the offense encountered, Paterno's desire to get Drummond more involved in the offense never materialized.

"When I came back last year I was probably 80 or 90 percent," Drummond said. "I had to wear a knee brace, and it felt like it was cutting down on my mobility. But during the summer, my knee felt better than it ever did. It's probably better than it was before I was injured."

Drummond wasn't the only receiver last season to have a bad year. The entire receiving corps dropped an average of five to six passes a game.

Penn State ranked ninth out of 11 teams in passing offense last season in the Big Ten with 183.4 yards per game, despite attempting the fifth-most passes in the conference.

Drummond is anxious to forget about last season.

"I already put last season behind me," Drummond said. "The drops last year ... we have so much courage and confidence right now that it's irrelevant to look back on last season. The drops were blown up in the media. I'm not worried about it. People just weren't relaxed enough. We'll bounce back this season."