Penn State Football: Bill O'Brien's Hectic Month Ends in Super Bowl XLVI

Silas Redd won’t talk to Bill O’Brien about the Super Bowl. 

Penn State’s junior running back, an avid New York Giants fan, doesn’t want there to be any ill feelings between player and coach if O’Brien, the Patriots offensive coordinator, returns to State College on a full-time basis sans Super Bowl bling.

“I’m actually not going to [talk] because I still wanna keep my job as a starter,” quipped Redd, who rushed for 1,241 yards and seven touchdowns in his first full season as the starter.

A hectic month will come to a close this weekend for O’Brien, who was hired Jan. 6 and has been splitting duties between State College and New England through the Pats playoff run, which ends after Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Giants.

“The hat and the heart are in one place and that’s to, along with the offensive staff here, do the best job that we can to put together a great game plan for the Patriots,” O’Brien told reporters in Indianapolis. “There’s only one focus that you can have when you’re in a game like this. We’ve got a great staff back at Penn State that’s in charge of what’s going on there right now. I’ll start there early next week.”

Naturally, holding two full-time jobs at the same time has dragged out as long as possible, disrupting O’Brien’s ability to zero on the 2012 recruiting class, finalized Wednesday when 18 commitments signed their letters of intent.

That recruiting strategy was also dictated by the fallout of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal, which also resulted in the dismissal of longtime coach Joe Paterno, who passed away Jan. 22 from lung cancer.

O’Brien has been insistent all week during interviews from Super Bowl site Indianapolis that working both jobs at the same time has been eased because of the personnel on Penn State and the Patriots, calling the juggling act overblown.

His Penn State staff, which he quickly assembled soon after being hired, has updated him through text message and email about developments on the recruiting circuit and within the program.

“I don’t know what to equate it to,” defensive coordinator Ted Roof said. “One of these jobs is a really, really, really big job that requires a lot of time and effort and attention to detail. And to have two of them, I really can’t imagine.”

Charlie Weis is another former Pats assistant that has gone through the challenge. He shared duties between coaching Notre Dame and coordinating the Pats offense in 2005, the last Super Bowl win for New England — even carrying two cell phones with him while in Jacksonville, one for each job.

Weis was fired after five seasons at Notre Dame but has since been hired by Kansas.

O’Brien was an offensive assistant in 2007 the last time the Patriots and Giants met in the Super Bowl. Now, he’s coordinating an offense for a coach (Bill Belichick) and led by a quarterback (Tom Brady) that will inevitably go down as two of the sport’s greatest.

O’Brien said he wouldn’t coach Sunday any differently despite knowing it was his last game with the tandem that allowed him the opportunity for a school like Penn State to even take notice to him.

“Some of you guys might think its cliché to say this, but I’m telling you the more you watch the Giants, it’s just going to be a very difficult game for us,” O’Brien said.

If New England wins the Super Bowl, O’Brien will have to miss the parade through Boston. He’s scheduled back in State College by Tuesday morning for a human resources orientation meeting.

Redd will be salty, he says, because it will mean his Giants couldn’t duplicate 2007.

But there’s one thing he’ll still be itching to see.

“I do wanna see the ring,” Redd said.

Related coverage

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