Penn State football head coach James Franklin announced that Tyler Bowen will call his offense’s plays during the team’s Cotton Bowl Classic matchup with No. 17 Memphis on Saturday.

If his players’ comments are any indication, the Nittany Lions’ offense wasn’t impacted much by former offensive coordinator Ricky Rahne’s departure for Old Dominion’s head coaching job.

“We didn’t skip a beat in the first meetings,” starting quarterback Sean Clifford said. “You never know what a coach is going to think or how he’s going to change when he gets on a bigger stage in front of everybody, but T-Bow didn’t blink an eye. He’s the same guy day-in and day-out, and everybody trusts him. We have a lot of confidence going into this game.”

“He’s very intelligent. He’s a good guy,” senior lineman Steven Gonzalez added. “He knows what he’s doing and how to read defenses well. I think he’ll do a really good job filling in for Coach Rahne. We don’t really change anything [after a change like this one]. We’re used to seeing them around. The coaches all coordinate and help each other out, so it’s not really something different.”

Bowen, who has served as Penn State’s tight ends coach for the past two seasons, will get the first crack at calling plays for the Nittany Lions’ offense as the team’s search for a new offensive coordinator gets underway. James Franklin understandably didn’t reveal too many details about his program’s offensive coordinator search, but he did say that Bowen will be considered for the job along with the rest of Penn State’s staff.

In addition to giving Bowen the offense’s play-calling responsibilities, Franklin made a pair of changes to his staff after Rahne’s departure. Kirk Campbell was promoted to interim quarterbacks coach after spending the past two-plus years as an off-the-field analyst for the team, and former student assistant Jeff Carpenter is back with the program as an offensive graduate assistant.

The tight ends coach’s job title technically hasn’t changed to “interim offensive coordinator,” but that’s a moot point — especially considering he’ll handle Ricky Rahne’s old play-calling duties against Memphis. As Franklin noted, Bowen’s first experience running an offense at this level will be very similar to Rahne, who called the plays in Penn State’s 35-28 Fiesta Bowl win over Washington in 2017.

Elsewhere, Sean Clifford admitted that he began thinking about who will serve as his next offensive coordinator as soon as Rahne told him he was leaving, but that hasn’t stopped him from focusing on the task at hand. Clifford’s work with his de facto offensive coordinator and new quarterbacks coach — including preparations for Penn State’s Cotton Bowl meeting with Memphis — is well underway.

“Right now, all I care about is getting into the gameplan with Coach Bowen and Kirk Campbell,” Clifford said. “I have the utmost confidence in the both of them. I’ve seen them work all through this year, and I know what they can do. Kirk has shown in all of our meetings that he’s ready to step up and take command of our room. He’s done a hell of a job so far.”