Mag Preview: Cut to the Chase
The following story appears in the latest edition of Blue White Illustrated's magazine, which has printed and been mailed to our magazine subscribers and is now on newsstands throughout the region.
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By Matt Herb
Sometimes, you just get lucky. You call a stunt, you slant through a gap, the other team has dialed up the wrong play for your defensive alignment, and you end up with an unblocked path to the football. Just like that, you’ve schemed your way to a TFL. Yetur Gross-Matos has been involved in a few of those types of plays this season.
But most of the time, you have to work for it. You have to fight off a block. You have to chase down a ball carrier who’s headed in the opposite direction, and then you have to put him on the ground. Gross-Matos has been involved in those kinds of plays, too, and to hear coach James Franklin tell it, that’s where he’s really shined as a sophomore defensive end at Penn State.
“Yetur is a guy who doesn’t know anything else but full speed,” Franklin said. “With some guys you have to coach that, and they figure it out later in their careers. Some guys, you fight with them their whole career, and they never practice as hard as they should practice, and then it never translates [into games] and they never end up maximizing their potential or their ability. And then other guys just naturally have a great motor.
“I think Yetur has got a great motor.”
That motor has propelled Gross-Matos to the top of the Big Ten’s statistical charts, and it’s helped Penn State field one of the most quarterback-unfriendly defenses in the Big Ten this season. Despite losing two starting defensive ends to health concerns in a little over a year’s time – Torrence Brown suffered a career-ending knee injury in September 2017, and Ryan Buchholz was forced to give up football this past August due to recurring back problems – the Nittany Lions had totaled 43 sacks during the regular season to lead the Big Ten. They had also amassed 100 tackles for loss to lead the league in that department, too.
Numbers like those are never just the result of a one-man effort, and while Gross-Matos has been the breakout star of Penn State’s defensive line this year with eight sacks and 20.0 tackles for loss, he’s hardly been the only Nittany Lion to spend a substantial portion of the season in the opponent’s backfield. Shaka Toney set a school record at Indiana on Oct. 20 by coming up with four sacks, all in the fourth quarter when the Hoosiers were trying to mount a comeback. Shareef Miller had totaled seven sacks and 14.0 tackles for loss through the regular season, and the Lions have also gotten sacks from backup ends Daniel Joseph and Jayson Oweh.
The Indiana game, in which Toney and Matos combined for all six of Penn State’s sacks, was a taste of what Franklin hopes to see going forward from a defensive end rotation in which the six players on the current depth chart will have a combined 13 seasons of eligibility remaining after this year. “Those two guys played well” against the Hoosiers, he said. “I think there’s going to be confidence that comes from that, and we can grow and we can build on it. That will be the plan.”
Listed at 6-foot-3, 241 pounds, Toney has often been portrayed as a situational player. If so, the Indiana game was his kind of situation: The Hoosiers needed points late in the game, and they needed them in a hurry, which meant that they needed to throw the ball downfield and hope that they could hold off Penn State’s hard-charging pass rush. They weren’t able to do that, and Toney was a big reason why. Even so, Franklin thinks that the scouting report on the redshirt sophomore might sell him a bit short.
“He’s not the biggest guy, so I think sometimes we don’t give him enough credit for what he’s able to do in the run game,” the coach said. “But I think that’s the next step, to get more tackles on normal downs, get more tackles for loss on normal downs, get production when it comes to sacks early in games, and then be able to do it when it matters most, which is what he was able to do at the end of the [Indiana] game in a critical situation.”
At 6-5, 259 pounds, Gross-Matos already has prototypical size, and he’s been putting it to use lately. His surge began at Indiana, a game in which he led the Nittany Lions with 10 tackles, including a pair of sacks. It continued against Iowa, as he gave the Hawkeyes’ offensive line fits all afternoon, finishing with nine stops, four of them for negative yardage, and two more sacks. Gross-Matos’s numbers in those two games – 19 tackles, four sacks – surpassed his totals from the team’s first six games put together, and he followed with nine tackles and two sacks in Penn State’s next two games against Michigan and Wisconsin.
The sharp uptick made it appear as though a switch had been flipped. Not so, Gross-Matos insists. As far as he’s concerned, the swagger that he’s brought to Penn State’s most recent games was there all along.
“I don’t think my confidence has grown,” he said. “I’ve been confident the whole time, so I just go out there and make plays.”
It’s a quiet kind of confidence, as Gross-Matos is hardly the most outspoken player on this year’s team.
He came to Penn State last year from Chancellor High in Virginia, where he was a dominant player as a senior, racking up 18.5 sacks to bring his career total to a school-record 37. After his commitment to Penn State, his father advised Penn State fans to brace for a big impact. “The upside,” Rob Matos said, “is ridiculous.”
But there was a somber undercurrent to Gross-Matos’s success. When he was 10 years old, a sudden thunderstorm interrupted a Little League baseball game in which he had been playing alongside his older brother Chelal. As the storm moved in, Yetur and younger brother Robby headed for a nearby car. Their mother, Sakinah Matos, went to get Chelal, who had been playing catch with a teammate as the players left the field. That’s when the lightning struck. Yetur remembers a thunderclap so loud that it felt as though the ground was vibrating. Still outside, Sakinah and several others were knocked off their feet. Chelal and his teammate had both been hit. The teammate was taken to a nearby hospital with serious burns, and though listed in critical condition, he survived. Chelal did not.
It’s been nearly a decade since his brother died, and Gross-Matos has tried to keep his memory alive. He used to wear Chelal’s jersey No. 5 in high school, and while that number wasn’t available at Penn State, he does have a tattoo on his arm in memory of his brother. Rob Matos told BWI in 2017 that Chelal “is always on his mind. That’s who he’s playing for, and he’s trying to make him proud.”
Gross-Matos had showed immediate promise at Chancellor. Matched up against offensive tackle Steven Moss, a Rivals.com four-star recruit who is now at Virginia, he impressed the coaching staff in the summer workouts leading up to his freshman season, displaying an ability to get to the passer. Four years later at Penn State, that pattern recurred. Gross-Matos was one of three true freshmen to see action last year, playing in all 13 games. In the Fiesta Bowl, he dropped Washington quarterback Jake Browning for a fourth-quarter sack that helped Penn State hold on to defeat the Huskies, 35-28. That performance turned out to be just a teaser for his terrific sophomore season.
Defensive line coach Sean Spencer said that Gross-Matos has gotten better as he’s packed more muscle onto that rangy 6-5 frame. The coaches knew all along that he had great potential for growth. As Spencer noted, “He’s got the biggest feet I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Gross-Matos can move those feet awfully fast, which is another reason for his success. Said Spencer, “His short-area quickness is phenomenal. He’s able to go straight, make a turn and get back to balance in a matter of seconds. You can draw up a blitz, or draw up a twist, and he’s able to make those lines make sense.”
Lately, Franklin has been citing Gross-Matos at team meetings as an example not just of how to play on Saturdays, but how to prepare throughout the week. Said the coach, “When your team sees a guy practice like that all the time and then is able to have the success that he’s had, it sends a great message for our whole team in terms of what work ethic and motor can do.”
“I’m really pleased,” Franklin added. “He’s a guy that we’ve been excited about for a while. He’s got the body type you’re looking for, he’s got the athleticism you’re looking for, he’s got the mentality. … It’s all starting to come together for him right now.”
What else is in the latest issue of Blue White Illustrated's magazine? Let's take a closer look at some of the feature stories, news and notes, here!
THE RUNDOWN:
FOOTBALL - We've got yet another issue packed with football! Feature stories in this issue include: Micah Parsons and his breakout true freshman season, K.J. Hamler and the Nittany Lion passing game, Trace McSorley and a final season of grit and determination, tight end Pat Freiermuth's big debut, and a check in with new offensive coordinator Ricky Rahne.
PHIL'S CORNER - Young standouts have helped reshape the image of Penn State's defense, growing through the course of the season into one of the more powerful units in the Big Ten. BWI publisher Phil Grosz has more in this Phil's Corner that you won't want to miss!
RECRUITING - As always, BWI recruiting analysts Ryan Snyder and Tim Owen have your Penn State football recruiting fix. In this issue, there is an update on Penn State's recruiting focus coming down the home stretch for the Class of 2019, a deep look ahead to the Class of 2020 and what it might hold for the Nittany Lions, a preview of the early enrollees set to begin their careers at Penn State, and more!
HOOPS - BWI men's basketball beat writer Nate Bauer takes a look at the true freshmen making a big impact with the Nittany Lions as the season gets under way. Can Myles Dread, Rasir Bolton and Myreon Jones help lift the team to new heights this season?
WRESTLING - BWI's Jim Carlson has details on the weight loss for Brady Berge as he works his way down to 149 pounds this season, as well as a look at freshman Roman Bravo-Young and his anticipated impact.
WALLY TRIPLETT - Penn State football historian Lou Prato offers up a heartfelt tribute to one of the pioneers of integrated football.
And these are just a few of the many stories and features that come with every edition of Blue White Illustrated's magazine, including Varsity Views notebook, Scorecard, The Last Word, and more!