Penn State Football: Defense deserves spotlight in recent weeks

For the third straight week, the Penn State football delivered on its end. It’s time people shifted the recognition to this underrated group.

Since 2016, Penn State football has rebuilt its brand as a high-scoring spread system that features NFL talent across it. No doubt, it’s a much-earned reputation. With that in mind, this defense has always been overshadowed. In today’s offense-focused world, defenses seem to only make the news when things go wrong. This article will at least end that trend for today.

The Nittany Lions have made massive improvements across the board this year. Up front, the most productive defensive lineman for Penn State is sophomore, first-year Yetur Gross-Matos. His development has been huge considering the D-Line lost slated starter Ryan Buchholz.

All he’s done this year is rack up 45 total tackles, 15.5 for loss and eight sacks in that time. He’s recorded a massive amount of that damage in the last four games, which goes hand-in-hand with the improving defensive unit. Gross-Matos has 28 stops, nine for loss and six sacks in that span. He’s dominated offensive lines and kept needed pressure on opposing QBs. No one else has delivered consistent productivity in that time. It’s aided an opposing QB stat line of just 187.2 yards per game on a 52 completion percentage and a 4-to-4, TD-to-INT ratio.

In that same time, the run defense has been a stonewall outside of the Michigan second half. The numbers don’t tell the story there quite the same, but they’ve held up enough to force quarterbacks in long downs and distances. For instance, if Jonathan Taylor’s 71-yard touchdown run was taken away, Penn State football mostly bottled up the run game to 138 yards on 36 carries. True freshman and leading tackler Micah Parsons led the charge with seven tackles.

Parsons along with juniors Cam Brown and Jan Johnson combined for 19 stops and did solid work inside to bounce back after Taylor’s first-drive TD romp. In fact, I remember Johnson getting pancake blocked on that play and thinking, “I wonder how the defense will respond?”

It responded by surrendering just three points the rest of the way and forced Jack Coan to beat them. Spoiler alert, he didn’t and ended up throwing two interceptions, including the Penn State game-sealing winner to senior safety Nick Scott.  The secondary has also seen much better days as of late. The aforementioned TD-to-INT ratio was largely due to a swarming defensive backfield led by Scott. In addition to his game-winning pick against Wisconsin, he did the same against Iowa with a panicked Nathan Stanley tossing it right to him in the red zone.

I’ve been highly impressed with this bunch. Despite losing two of its starting linebackers, much of its secondary and a couple of defensive ends to retirement, this team has succeeded. I think they have a real chance to do damage the rest of the season and entering the 2019 season.