Penn State experienced a season of downs, then ups, on both sides of the ball as it steadied itself from an 0-5 start to finish at 4-5 for the year. Earlier, we examined the key takeaways of the season on the offensive side of the ball. We'll turn our attention now to the Nittany Lions' defense.

As Penn State head coach James Franklin insisted Monday in his year-end wrap-up press conference, the performance was an outlier to the standard that had been set previously in the program and throughout his tenure.

"I think we've done a pretty good job of that over our time, really my time all the way back to Vanderbilt I think we've done a pretty good job of that," Franklin said. "I wouldn't say last year fell into that category on offense, defense, or special teams."

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Just three games into the Nittany Lions’ 2020 campaign, Franklin already understood that an area of offseason emphasis was coming up short.

Believing the program’s defensive personnel of rising to the level of becoming playmakers, that was simply not bearing the fruit that Franklin understood to be a critical asset to the team’s opportunities for success.

“We got to create more turnovers on defense,” Franklin said of the 0-3 Lions heading into their trip to Nebraska. “That's something that is critical.”

In nearly every capacity, the topic of turnovers was the fundamental story of Penn State’s defense for the 2020 season. Unable to create takeaways, falling to ninth in the Big Ten after a 2019 campaign in which they finished third with 22, and dragged down by the repeated failings of the offense’s interceptions, fumbles, and turnovers on downs, Penn State’s defense started its season as something akin to purgatory.

No clearer example could be had than that of a performance at Indiana in which the Nittany Lions limited the Hoosiers to just 211 total yards of offense and 16 first downs, but still surrendered 36 points thanks to inopportune penalties and two particularly brutal turnovers surrendered by the offense, even while creating a season-high two turnovers themselves.

Weeks later on his radio show Franklin suggested that the defense was nearing the point where it could create the takeaways that, through the first three games, had been limited to the two at Indiana.

“I think we're close. We've had opportunities where either we take a wrong angle on a break, or the ball hits our hands and we don't finish it. I think the pressure on the quarterback is also an important piece of that as well because whenever you can make the quarterback uncomfortable in the pocket or the ball comes out during contact, then good things happen, get your hands on balls and things like that,” he said. “So yeah, it's offensively protecting them and defensively it's creating them.”

That reality never truly came for the Nittany Lions, though.

Finishing the year with 10 total turnovers gained, the Lions finished 83rd nationally in the category, but, on a per-game basis, their 1.11 takeaways per game average was also a vast departure from their 1.69 per game the season prior.

Describing turnovers as “the story of the season” on both sides of the ball in his post-game evaluation of the team’s humbling loss to Iowa at its midpoint, Franklin circled back to the notion in his season-wrap on Monday. Arguably the biggest shortcoming separating Penn State from having a defense that upends a game’s trajectory, it’s the biggest takeaway (no pun intended) of the program’s 2020 season on that side of the ball.

“An area that we have to improve that I would not say has been a strength of ours is creating turnovers,” Franklin said Monday. “Creating more turnovers is a huge momentum swing. It's big for your offense, it's big for your defense. it limits their time on the field. And then you have an opportunity to score on defense.”

Ohio State (2.35 takeaways per game), Clemson (1.91), and Alabama (1.69), all offer a distinct example of the category’s importance, with the Buckeyes finishing sixth, the Tigers 19th, and the Tide finishing 43rd. Even Indiana, at fourth nationally with 2.5 takeaways per game, reveals a major component of the Hoosiers’ success this season.

In what should come as little surprise, many of these primary takeaways are interconnected.

And just as much as Penn State’s inability to create turnovers became a major story of the 2020 season defensively, so too was the impact of the performance of the line on that element.

“Being able to get pressure on the quarterback, being able to make the decision-maker uncomfortable in the pocket (is important); that's being able to do that with a traditional four-down rush or whether that's bringing pressure,” Franklin said. “We've gotten as many sacks as anybody over the last five years, we did not have that type of production this year.”

On its face, the point is demonstrably true. Finishing with 45 sacks for 335 yards in losses in 2019, the Nittany Lions were able to wrangle just 21 sacks for 146 yards in losses this year.

While the statistics suggest a huge dropoff, at nine games instead of 13, the numbers aren’t quite as indicative of the Nittany Lions’ pass rush performance as another. Rather, with a team sack percentage rate of 7.32, Penn State finished 45th nationally in the category with a percentage dropoff of 0.89 percent from a 2019 rate of 8.21. Further, under a somewhat more subjective analysis, Penn State finished 10th among Power Five programs for its overall pass-rush grade of 81.6 by Pro Football Focus.

According to Franklin on Monday, though, his issue with Penn State’s pressure in the backfield delved deeper than simply dragging the quarterback to the ground.

“If you really look at us, a lot of our pressures on quarterbacks came from our pressures, not just a straight four-down rush. And whether that was defensive line sacks or whether that was linebacker pressures and sacks, or defensive back pressures and sacks, we got to get back to that,” he said. “We got to get back to making quarterback uncomfortable in the pocket.”

Ultimately, the takeaway is probably somewhere in the middle when it comes to Penn State’s pass rush this season, with Brent Pry’s season-ending comments offering a balanced perspective on the topic.

“I don't feel any different than I have in the past. You'd like to be at about 100 percent on-drop back situations where you have one-on-ones. You don't want to feel like the quarterback is back there milking the ball, and there hasn't been a lot of times I've felt like that, starting with Indiana,” Pry said. “I mean, you look at the Indiana game and there have been people in his face.

“Obviously the sack production, isn't what it's been, but we've also had some philosophical changes in our approach in some things we felt we needed to do better in containing quarterbacks. Hips at him and pocket integrity, an area where we didn't feel like we were good enough going into the season.

“You could have 40-plus sacks a year, but you have to look at some other things that go along with that because sack numbers don't equate to great defense all the time. You look statistically, there are some other things that come into play there. Quarterback scrambling has been a liability for us, and it's something that we wanted to address this offseason, and the mentality a little bit has changed there, particularly with spread sets. So I wouldn't say I'm disappointed.

“Would I like to see a few more quarterbacks on the ground? Yeah, I would, but there's not a lot of snaps where I can look at it and say, ‘We’re not good enough right here, we're not good enough right here, we're not good enough right here.’ It hasn't really been that situation.”

Like Penn State’s lack of takeaways this season, its explosive play performance defensively can also tie somewhat to that pressure up front.

And, in many ways, it should come as no surprise that Penn State’s frequency surrendering explosive plays to opponents moved largely in correlation with its progress through the course of the season.

“I think at the end of the day, you have to very similar to what we talked about on offense. We have to limit explosive plays, probably more so now than ever,” Franklin said Monday. “You have to limit the big plays.”

Against Indiana, Penn State actually did.

Though the Hoosiers notched 36 points, one of the most frequently explosive offensive teams in the Big Ten was limited to only four total big plays against the Nittany Lions, none topping a 21-yard completion from Michael Penix to Ty Fryfogle in the second quarter.

The ensuing four games were another story entirely, though.

With Ohio State’s offense bludgeoning Penn State’s defense to the tune of 12 total explosive plays for a combined 311 yards of offense, eclipsing 20 yards on six separate occasions, twice for touchdowns, it set a tone that would carry through to Maryland the next week. In the Terrapins’ case, they produced 10 chunk plays for 288 yards and four scores. And while Nebraska’s dysfunctional offense offered something of a respite, tallying seven explosive plays, Iowa became the third opponent in four weeks to reach double-digit explosive plays with 10 for 185 yards.

Somewhat turning the corner at Michigan, surrendering only two receptions of more than 20 yards, the Nittany Lions still allowed a 59-yard run to Hassan Haskins before finally settling down at Rutgers, not giving up a play of more than 19 yards.

Really, though, with Michigan State generating another 11 explosive plays for a remarkable 251 of their 389 total yards, and even Illinois generating 171 of their 273 yards on just five explosive plays, two for touchdowns, Penn State’s susceptibility to the big play was an area that became more infrequent as the season rolled along, but remained a problem nonetheless.

As Franklin indicated Monday and can be easily recalled through many of those explosive plays, a major component to that explosive play susceptibility had to do with poor tackling.

“We did not tackle as well last year as we have,” he said. “That has shown up in previous years, but as the season has gone on we've gotten better. But tackling is going to be a big part of that.”

Maybe most evident in Penn State’s struggles against Maryland, particularly during a first half in which the Terrapins cashed in touchdowns of 42, 62, 38, and 34 yards, the source of pain could be narrowed down to poor tackling.

“They got a couple of man beaters against us that got us out of leverage. We didn't play a few things the right way. And those things that we need to get fixed and those things that we need to get corrected,” Franklin explained. “But I think at the end of the day, if you make the tackle and get them down, those things happen against everybody. Guys are gonna make the right call in the right situation, and the guy's gonna make a play, but what you got to do is you got to get people on the ground.

“I think at the end of the day, people are going to create separation through picks and rubs and things like that versus man coverage. That is going to happen from time to time. And when it does, you got to get them on the ground and live to play another down.”

During a season in which all of those elements combined to produce a defensive performance that was closer to the middle than either extreme, finishing 17th in total defense at 328.8 yards per game, 26th in rushing defense (130.2 ypg), and 24th in passing yards allowed (198.6 ypg), their improvement is what could open the door to more success next season.

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