Staff photo / Neel Madhavan Youngstown State quarterback Beau Brungard (12) communicates a call to the offense during a drill on Tuesday at the Watson and Tressel Training Site as the Penguins opened spring practice.

YOUNGSTOWN — Despite the sub-freezing temperatures and snowfall outside, spring has arrived for the Youngstown State football team.

Coming off an 8-5 campaign and a first-round exit in the FCS playoffs, the Penguins opened spring practice on Tuesday morning inside the Watson and Tressel Training Site.

“Felt like Christmas morning with the snow on the ground,” YSU head coach Doug Phillips said. “Been waiting a long time for this. I think I was staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m. this morning, and I just decided to get up and get to the office. It’s exciting because of the work that they’ve done in January, February. Our job is to get out of them to be the best version of themselves. So that’s the focus, getting 1% better.”

The Penguins were in spider pads on Tuesday, but will eventually progress to full pads as they move through spring.

YSU will have 15 practices on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays over the next month, before concluding spring with the annual Red-White Game on April 18.

“Our emphasis has been how we do anything is how we do everything,” Phillips said. “How we get to the field, how we get to meetings, are you taking a water bottle, how are you taking your notes, how are you presenting yourself in those meetings? So that’s the focus, and if we can show those gradual gains, it’s going to help us when we get to fall.”

In addition to a plethora of returners on both sides of the ball, YSU has a sizable group of newcomers getting up to speed this spring, including nine mid-year freshmen enrollees and more than 20 transfers.

“We gotta teach them the way we practice. So for me, it’s just making sure all the arrows are pointing in the same direction and that they’re competing and working hard,” Phillips said. “I think the effort is going to be there each and every day. They gotta understand our standards of effort and attitude about competing for a position, and just that mental toughness, that mental toughness that we can finish games and play for 60 minutes.”

On offense, the Penguins will have plenty of continuity in the second year of offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich’s scheme, with Walter Payton Award winning quarterback Beau Brungard back for his senior season.

YSU also retained its entire starting offensive line, most of its running backs, three tight ends and two receivers.

“It all starts up front. We were able to bring back our guys up front, and that’s where it all starts. They make it happen,” Brungard said. “We have guys in every single room that played last year, and we have all the coaches back. So we’re raising the bar, and we’re not letting anybody below that bar.”

Along with the two returners at receiver, seven of the Penguins’ transfer additions will also be competing for snaps out wide after YSU lost five of its top-six receiving targets to either graduation or the portal.

“They’re big bodies, they’re very talented and a lot of them are older guys that have experience,” Brungard said. “So it was great this offseason the past few months just getting to get with those guys and throw with them to get a feel and a connection for how we go well together.

“These new guys, they know the standard and they know where they have to be at.”

On the defensive side of the ball, perhaps the biggest objective for the Penguins this spring is installing new defensive coordinator Ryan Riemedio’s scheme.

The process includes learning new playcalls, new blitz packages and new coverages, while also becoming familiar with different terminology and communications within the system. That all comes with a learning curve, especially early on during spring.

“It definitely was for me. I played the same type of defense my four previous years, so it’s just a lot different, especially schematically,” linebacker Mike Wells said. “Players are doing a lot of different things, a lot of different communication and different verbiage, too.

“I feel like our most important thing is our effort and attitude. But the second-most important thing would be getting comfortable and intertwining all the parts of the defense. We gotta get that going, and I feel like we will before the end of spring ball, so then once we get to fall, we can just flow and get ready for the season.”

The Penguins retained each of their three top linebackers, while also returning the majority of its key pieces on the defensive line.

Rebuilding the secondary in the transfer portal, however, was one of the key focal points for YSU during the offseason. To do that, the Penguins signed six newcomers to compete for snaps alongside some of the team’s young returning defensive backs.

“We rebuilt our secondary, which is a good thing. Anything new is good,” Wells said. “We’ll have a lot of different looks up front, and we’ll have a lot of different disguises to hide what we’re doing. … It’ll just create a lot of confusion for the offense, you’ll see a lot of different moving parts in our defense, and we’ll be more aggressive defensively.”