P.J. is the guy who makes Penn State fans salivate whenever he steps onto the field, bounces off a 275-pound defensive end and fires a pass 40 yards downfield with seemingly no effort.
Paul Jones (left) will enter the preseason as the No. 2 quarterback behind Matt McGloin (right).
Paul is the guy who has put P.J. back in a position to get back onto the field.
These two people are in fact the same person -- Penn State sophomore quarterback Paul Jones, who learned an important lesson when he spent 2011 on the sidelines after failing to meet academic eligibility requirements.
"Before I wasn't too good at separating football from school," Jones said Friday at Penn State's Lift For Life. "If football had me down, I wouldn't put my best effort into school. Now I separate the two.
"P.J. handles football, Paul handles all the school work. I just make sure they're all separated and I don't mix the emotions, and just handle my business on both parts."
Jones didn't say if Paul or P.J. was the one who studied Bill O'Brien's thick new playbook, but he has made it a big part of his summer routine.
"I try to spend at least an hour a day looking through everything, making sure I know everything," Jones said. "I'm a quarterback, I have to know everything. I've just got to keep at it."
Jones and the rest of the Penn State quarterbacks get together with their receivers a couple of times a week to develop chemistry and learn the variations on different routes.
"Most of our patterns will change depending what the defense does," tight end Garry Gilliam said. "So we communicate with the quarterback -- is it two-deep, three-deep, linebackers here or whatever -- just so we get the visualization of what we're doing and the timing down."
O'Brien officially named senior Matt McGloin his starting quarterback in early June. He also said then that Jones, not junior Rob Bolden, would be the No. 2 quarterback heading into the start of the preseason.
Whatever disappointment Jones might have had about not being named the starter has been channeled into a desire to keep working -- both on the field and in the classroom.
"My approach is just doing whatever I have to do," Jones said. "Whatever they ask me, I'll do it. I'll take being No. 2 over being ineligible every time. I'm just constantly making progress and that's all I can ask for."
