Phil's Corner: A talented, experienced defense offers reasons for optimism
* The following column from publisher Phil Grosz has been excerpted from Blue White Illustrated's 2019 Penn State Football Preview magazine, printed and mailed to our subscribers this month and on newsstands throughout the state. To learn more about the issue, CLICK HERE!
Just how good can Penn State’s defense be in 2019? I believe it has a legitimate chance of challenging both Michigan and Ohio State for the best overall defense in the Big Ten this fall.
And I’m not the only one who’s excited about the Nittany Lions’ potential on that side of the ball. Pro Football Hall of Famer Jack Ham, a former Penn State All-American who has stayed close to the program as color analyst on the team’s radio broadcasts, said recently that he believes the Lions’ defense has the potential to become the best of the James Franklin era and may be the fastest defense the program has ever fielded.
“The key for that to become a reality this fall will be the development of what I believe could become the best group of linebackers at Penn State in more than a decade,” Ham said. “It’s one of the best groups of pure athletes at the linebacker position at the underclassman level I’ve ever seen at Penn State.”
Penn State’s defensive performance throughout the 2018 season went largely unnoticed by the national media. That was understandable. While the Nittany Lions did post some impressive numbers in certain categories, their stats were not exceptional across the board. Penn State ranked fifth in the Big Ten in total defense, allowing an average of 350.5 yards per game. It finished fourth in scoring defense (20.5 points per game), trailing Michigan State (17.2), Iowa (17.8) and Michigan (19.4).
The Lions’ best numbers last year pertained to their pass defense. They were second in the Big Ten against the pass, allowing only 181.5 yards per game through the air. Only Michigan was better, with a nation-leading average of 147.8 yards per game, and the Wolverines and Nittany Lions allowed only 14 touchdown passes apiece. But in the national media, Penn State’s impressive performance against the pass was overshadowed by its inconsistency vs. the run. The Lions ranked eighth in the Big Ten in that department, as opponents averaged 169.0 yards per game on the ground and totaled 16 rushing touchdowns.
It’s a real shame that those numbers created so much skepticism, because if you look more closely at its performance, Penn State’s starting defensive line had one of its best seasons in more than a decade, and maybe its best performance since 1999 when the unit was anchored by future No. 1 overall draft pick Courtney Brown at defensive end.
As evidence of how impressive their defensive line was throughout the 2018 season, consider that the Lions finished first in the Football Bowl Subdivision with an average of 3.62 sacks per game and were fourth with an average of 8.2 tackles for loss per game.
Penn State’s starting defensive line, which for all but two games consisted of Yetur Gross-Matos and Shareef Miller at end and Robert Windsor and Kevin Givens at tackle, turned in one of the most impressive performances at Penn State in many years. Those players combined for an unbelievable 56.5 tackles for loss and 28 sacks.
Just to show you how impressive that performance was, Lindy’s 2019 season preview magazine lists Auburn’s defensive line as the best in the country. The Tigers’ three returning starters up front totaled 28.5 tackles for loss and 15 sacks last fall. Penn State welcomes back one fewer starter than Auburn, but its returnees – Windsor and Gross-Matos – combined for 31 TFL and 15.5 sacks in 2018.
With the 2019 season rapidly approaching, Penn State will be looking to post similar numbers. Even with Miller and Givens having chosen to forgo their respective senior seasons, I believe that’s a realistic goal.
Last season, Gross-Matos was second in the Big Ten with 20 tackles for loss and eight sacks. ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. said the junior defensive end could end up being taken in the first 15 picks of the 2020 NFL Draft, assuming he chooses to come out early.
Looking at the conference as a whole, this year’s contingent of defensive ends is the best in many years, maybe the best ever. Along with Gross-Matos, it includes Chase Young of Ohio State, Kenny Willekes of Michigan State and A.J. Epenesa of Iowa, all of whom have the potential to become first-round draft selections in 2020.
Ham described Gross-Matos as Penn State’s best defensive end since Brown, who was chosen No. 1 overall by Cleveland in the 2000 NFL Draft. “That’s the type of talent he possesses,” Ham said. “In my opinion, Brown is the most talented defensive end to ever play at Penn State.”
In the spring, Franklin said that Penn State’s 2019 team may boast the best group of defensive ends he has ever had in his coaching career. Beyond Gross-Matos, that group includes Shaka Toney, Shane Simmons, Daniel Joseph, Jayson Oweh, Nick Tarburton, Adisa Isaac and Smith Vilbert. The qualities that make the group so special are its athletic ability, length and great positional speed.
Gross-Matos is listed at 6-foot-5, 265 pounds, and during the testing sessions that followed winter workouts, he posted an incredible 4.52-second 40-yard time. It’s not hard to see why Kiper expects him to be selected in the top half of the draft’s first round.
But Gross-Matos isn’t the only great athlete in Penn State’s defensive end group. There’s also Oweh, who is listed at 6-5, 250 pounds and told reporters this spring that he had run a 4.33 40-yard time. Those two players exemplify why this just might be the best group of athletes the Lions have ever assembled at defensive end.
Elsewhere on the defensive line, Givens must be replaced at the three-technique tackle position, but I believe Penn State has the potential to be better in the middle than it was last season. That may sound surprising, considering that Windsor and Givens combined for 21.5 tackles for loss and 12.5 sacks in 2018. But there is no question that Windsor was the most underrated and overlooked member of Penn State’s defense. He totaled 11 tackles for loss and 7.5 sacks, a performance that prompted Gil Brandt, the legendary former Dallas Cowboys talent scout turned NFL.com analyst, to list him as the fifth-best overall defensive tackle available for the 2020 draft.
With Windsor returning for his final season and Antonio Shelton and P.J. Mustipher battling for the three-technique spot, you can understand why assistant coach Sean Spencer is so enthused about the defensive tackles’ potential this coming fall.
“Antonio Shelton had a tremendous spring,” Spencer told The Centre Daily Times. “He’s a guy who bided his time to get to the position right now where, if we went out tomorrow, he would be starting. This is going to be his year. He has a chance to really shine.
“And then a guy like P.J. Mustipher was a tremendously talented freshman who played early. He’s only the second freshman D-tackle I’ve played in the history of my Division I coaching. … It’s hard to play as a true freshman as a tackle. … I’ve watched P.J. change his body. I’ve watched him eat properly, work out extra. I watched these things, and you can just see it as a coach. That dude is about to turn the corner.”
Windsor, Shelton and Mustipher will give Penn State a solid three-man rotation at defensive tackle this fall. Plus, there is good depth here, with Damion Barber, Fred Hansard, Judge Culpepper and Aeneas Hawkins back, along with incoming freshmen D’Von Ellies and Hakeem Beamon. Those players should give Penn State the manpower it will need to match or exceed its 2018 performance.
That brings us to the linebacker unit. There is no getting around it: Penn State’s linebacker group struggled last season. Koa Farmer was disappointing at the Will OLB position. Jan Johnson was solid in the middle, finishing the season as the team’s second-leading tackler with 72 total stops, but he still needed time to adapt to his new role as a starter. And Cam Brown, too, needed to get used to being the starter at the Sam OLB spot. Add in the fact that true freshman Micah Parsons was playing an outside linebacker position that he had never played in high school, and it’s easy to see why Penn State struggled at times on defense, particularly against the run. It was the Nittany Lions’ inexperience at all three linebacker positions that caused many of those problems.
But Johnson, Brown and Parsons are back, and they’re all a lot more experienced than they were a year ago. Ham said that the potential for improvement in the linebacker corps is the top reason to be optimistic about Penn State’s defensive outlook in 2019.
“Playing the Will position last season was a learning experience for Parsons,” Ham said. “He was a defensive end in high school, and he focused on rushing the quarterback. Learning to play the outside linebacker position was totally new for him.”
It was a testament to Parsons’ tremendous athletic ability that he ended up as Penn State’s leading tackler last year with 83 stops, including five tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks. But looking at the linebacker corps more generally, this was the area where the defense came up short. If you want to have an elite defense, your starting linebacker unit has to be able to make game-changing plays. In 2018, Brown, Johnson and Farmer failed to do that. Between them, they totaled only 9.5 tackles for loss and 2.5 sacks.
It really wasn’t until the second half of the season that Brown started to become a big-play linebacker for Penn State. He finished the season with 6.5 tackles for loss but only two sacks.
While much of the attention will be focused on Parsons this fall, Ham said that Brown could and should be one of the most improved players on Penn State’s defense. He stands 6-5 and will likely weigh about 235 pounds going into the season, and he combines that size with what is reported to be 4.55-second 40-yard speed. In other words, Brown has all the physical attributes to become a major factor on Penn State’s defense this fall. I believe he has the ability to compete at an All-Big Ten level, and with his size and speed, he has all the physical traits that NFL scouts look for at the weakside OLB position.
Penn State defensive coordinator Brent Pry said he expects Brown to come to the forefront at the Sam OLB position. “I’m super excited about Cam,” Pry said. “Everyone knows who Cam is, but he finally has a chance to play to his potential. He plays reckless. You’ve got to understand, he’s 6-5, 235. He runs by people. There aren’t a lot of guys with that length, with that size, who do that. He plays field ’backer. He plays Mike. He can rush, and he can cover. He’s emerging as the leader of our defense.”
In addition to its starters, Penn State has the best group of underclassman linebackers in the Big Ten in four-star true freshmen Brandon Smith and Lance Dixon, and backups Jesse Luketa, Ellis Brooks and Charlie Katshir.
The secondary also appears to be a team strength. John Reid and Tariq Castro-Fields are the projected starters at cornerback, with Donovan Johnson, Trent Gordon, D.J. Brown, Keaton Ellis, Marquis Wilson and Joey Porter Jr. behind them. Returning starter Garrett Taylor has a lock on the boundary safety position after finishing his junior year with three interceptions and ranking third on the team in tackles, and Jonathan Sutherland brings superb depth to the position. That makes the field safety position the only question mark in the secondary. Lamont Wade and juco transfer Jaquan Brisker will battle for that spot in August.
All told, Penn State returns eight players who started at least one game last year. One of those players is likely to be a first-round draft pick in 2020, and there are plenty of other rising stars in the linebacker unit and secondary. Looking at the big picture, there’s ample reason to believe that Penn State will have a chance to field the Big Ten’s No. 1 or No. 2 defense this fall.
That defense is the main reason why I believe Penn State will challenge Ohio State, Michigan State and Michigan for the Big Ten East Division title. Without question, this is the Nittany Lions’ best defense since Franklin took over the program in 2014.
*****
Don't miss your chance to grab a copy of the BWI 2019 Penn State Football Preview magazine, shipped directly to you for only $10: