Penn State Football: 5 key position battles to watch throughout spring practice
By Nick Kreiser
A wide-open defensive end room for Penn State Football
The Nittany Lions lose their two most impactful edge rushers in Arnold Ebikeite and Jesse Luketa, so the competition to determine who will be the primary defensive ends in 2022 is wide open at this point.
As the most experienced of the bunch, Nick Tarburton and Adisa Isaac are probably the top two options at this moment, but there might not be much separating them from some other defensive ends on the roster.
Smith Vilbert flashed some upside in the Outback Bowl, collecting three sacks in the loss against Arkansas. It isn’t realistic to expect him to keep up that pace over the course of an entire season (though it would be nice), but is it a sign of good things to come and a potential breakout season for the redshirt junior?
To earn meaningful snaps, Vilbert will have to battle it out with Zuriah Fisher, a talented and explosive sophomore, that is still raw and needs to develop as an edge rusher, being that linebacker is his natural position.
These four defensive ends, Tarburton, Isaac, Vilbert, and Fisher, have an opportunity this spring to prove they deserve to be one of the primary edge rushers for the Nittany Lions, before Dani Dennis-Sutton arrives on campus this summer.
Dennis-Sutton will still have to earn his playing time over the summer, but he possesses the tools that, if some of the returning defensive ends don’t stand out this spring, the true freshman can quickly take their spot, and not give it back.