Penn State football head coach James Franklin said he plans on preserving the redshirts of some of the team’s true freshmen beginning this weekend against Maryland.

“A lot of the guys, we’ve kind of held on that we’re going to save this fourth game for later in the year for injuries or whatever it may be,” he said. “Or they are just not ready, and the coaches are not comfortable with putting them in a tightly contested game at this point.”

The Nittany Lions weren’t afraid to use the services of several freshmen — including Noah Cain and Devyn Ford on offense and Keaton Ellis, Brandon Smith, and Lance Dixon — throughout the first three games of the season.

Cain and Ford have been two reliable pieces of Penn State’s by-committee approach to the running game, and Ellis has played quite a bit in Penn State’s secondary. Meanwhile, Smith and Dixon have rotated into the game at linebacker when regular starters Cam Brown, Jan Johnson, and Micah Parsons needed a breather.

Although Franklin didn’t indicate specifically which freshmen would preserve their redshirts, Cain and Ford don’t seem likely to be among them. If the head coach’s comments are any indicator, the Nittany Lions don’t plan on deviating from their running backs-by-committee approach.

“It’s the same answer it’s been every week. We’re going to play all four of those guys until somebody really separates themselves from the group,” Franklin said. “We’re comfortable playing with all four because we think all four can play. The only way that would change is if somebody just makes it clearly obvious to everybody that they are the guy.”

Last year, the NCAA implemented the new rule, which allows true freshmen to appear in a maximum of four games before their team can no longer use a redshirt on them. Last season, players like Justin Shorter, Daniel George, and Jayson Oweh all played in fewer than four games and, therefore, were able to maintain that fourth season of collegiate eligibility.

Shorter is one of Penn State’s three starting wide receivers, and George and Oweh have both played key roles as back-ups at their positions. Being able to preserve that year of eligibility is huge, but Franklin also acknowledged some of the rule’s downsides.

“I think with all these rule changes, there’s unforeseen consequences to it,” he said. “Just a few years back, the NCAA was all about deregulation, deregulation, deregulation. All those rules are in that book for a reason. I get it from both perspectives [coach and athlete], but I think the hard part is you make changes to rules that were in place for a reason, and there’s unforeseen consequences that probably aren’t thought about by everybody on the front end.

“So it’s hard to say whether it’s good or bad, but I think the intentions are all these rules are good for the student-athletes.”

Franklin didn’t say any of his specific gripes with the redshirt rule, but perhaps one of them is its facilitation of graduate transfers. In theory, a student-athlete can get game experience as a true freshman, redshirt, and graduate on time, before spending his final season of NCAA eligibility as a grad transfer.

That’s a huge plus for the student-athlete, who has way more freedom to do what he/she wants, but it also may come back to hurt the original program, which invested time and resources into making him a better player just to have him leave as a senior.