Zuriah Fisher missed his entire redshirt senior season in 2024 with an injury. Then, after a strong offseason and fall camp, a new injury kept him out in Week 1 of the 2025 season against Nevada. Without Fisher, Penn State rolled to a 46-11 victory, but defensive coordinator Jim Knowles’s defense could be even more fearsome with Fisher back on the field in Week 2.
In his early week press conference, James Franklin admitted that he expected Fisher to play, but that the coaching staff opted to keep him out for precautionary reasons. “I think that explains how close he is,” Franklin said. “He's close to being back, and it will be significant getting him back. You guys know how I feel about him."
How Franklin feels about the sixth-year Nittany Lion, and how the entire program seems to feel, is that Fisher is poised to be a breakout star opposite Dani Dennis-Sutton. Fisher has spent most of his career in a deep defensive end rotation, but finally has the opportunity to start up for Penn State, and the 6-foot-3, 259-pound product of Aliquippa High School in Western Pennsylvania, impressed this offseason.
Veteran Defensive end Zuriah Fisher nearing a return in from fall camp injury
With Fisher off the field, redshirt freshman Jaylen Harvey saw 24 snaps at the edge, and true freshmen Chaz Coleman and Yvan Kemajou saw 20 and 18, respectively. A four-star recruit, Coleman has gotten the green light to burn his redshirt this season and generated four quarterback pressures in his collegiate debut.
While it had the risk of coming back to bite them, it was smart of the coaching staff to keep Fisher out for precautionary reasons. Last season, Penn State played 16 games. That’s nearly an NFL schedule. To handle that volume across the season, Franklin has to develop depth and manage the workload of his best players carefully. By resting Fisher, he accomplished both.
Penn State’s schedule, much like Ohio State’s weak non-conference slate a year ago, gives the Nittany Lions a de facto preseason. After Nevada, Penn State hosts Villanova and FIU before a bye week. Then, Oregon comes to town. The entire first month of the season has to be entirely geared toward winning that Big Ten Title rematch, and that includes building depth at defensive end.
After losing Abdul Carter from last year’s roster, Penn State suddenly got rather thin on the edge. Dennis-Sutton returned for his senior season, and Fisher returned from injury, but the rest of the rotation is young and inexperienced. Coleman, Harvey, Kemajou, and Mylachi Williams will still be young by the time the Ducks arrive in Week 5, but they should get plenty of experience in the next two weeks.
If Fisher is still an injury concern, Franklin should keep him sidelined again because he needs to be 100% for Big Ten play and the College Football Playoff, not when the No. 2 team in the country hosts an FCS opponent in the first week of September.