Magazine Feature: Hitsville, U.S.A.
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Just about everyone knows the LaVar Leap. If you’re a Penn State fan, or even if you’re not, you’ve probably seen it on TV highlight packages and vintage YouTube clips. It’s an all-time great play by an all-time great player, and a lot of Nittany Lion fans can probably break down LaVar Arrington’s most famous tackle frame by frame: How he comes rushing up from his spot in the second level. How he sails over Illinois’ left guard the instant the ball is snapped. How he comes crashing down on Elmer Hickman just as the Illini fullback takes the handoff, slamming into him from above like a piece of falling space junk.
Brandon Smith knows that play, too. The sophomore outside linebacker checks in with Arrington regularly, having struck up a relationship after meeting him on the Beaver Stadium sideline during a recruiting visit in 2018. To know Arrington is, of course, to know that moment in Penn State lore. Not for nothing is the former All-American known on Twitter as LaVar Leap Arrington.
It’s easy to marvel at the athleticism that Arrington displayed in that otherwise uneventful victory over the Illini in 1998. But Smith is an analytical player. What impresses him about the play is not just Arrington’s athleticism but his anticipation. The play could, after all, have easily gone down as the most spectacular offsides penalty in Penn State history. But it didn’t, and Smith understands why.
“Being able to time the snap like that – it shows the kind of dedication he put in throughout the week leading up to that game,” Smith said. “That really shows how dedicated you are to being a student of the game. That’s first and foremost. And then you see the actual jump. You know that his athletic ability and the hard work he put in on the field and the countless days [of practice] when nobody was watching were really what you need to do to be great. That’s the blueprint.”
Over the years, Penn State has had more than its share of great linebackers, a lineage that dates back to the early years of the Paterno era when Jack Ham was beginning his rise to college and pro stardom. It has continued through the decades with players like Arrington, Greg Buttle, Shane Conlan, Paul Posluszny, Sean Lee, NaVorro Bowman and dozens more.
This year, Smith and the other players at his position group will be looking to add to Penn State’s Linebacker U lore. They intend to follow the blueprint. Those other players include Micah Parsons, a consensus All-American as a sophomore last year, along with returnees Ellis Brooks, Jesse Luketa, Lance Dixon and Charlie Katshir and freshmen Tyler Elsdon, Zuriah Fisher and Curtis Jacobs. Parsons is Penn State’s headliner after leading the team in tackles each of the past two seasons, but Brooks, Luketa, Dixon, Smith and Jacobs all received four-star ratings from Rivals.com, giving Penn State its deepest linebacker talent pool of the James Franklin era and possibly its deepest since 2006, when the unit featured five future NFL draftees in Posluszny, Lee, Dan Connor, Tim Shaw and Josh Hull.
Except for Parsons, this year’s group doesn’t boast a wealth of starting experience. Between them, Brooks, Luketa, Dixon, Smith and Katshir have made only two career starts, both by Luketa last season. But their potential appears to be vast.
“Every one of those guys today is about 238, 240 and can run and is athletic,” said Ham, a Pro Football Hall of Famer who for the past 20 years has served as color analyst on the Penn State Sports Network. “It’s not only Ellis Brooks and Jesse Luketa, who are on the inside. I saw Brandon Smith at the [Cotton Bowl], and he’s a 240-pound outside linebacker who can fly out there. He’s just literally scratching the surface of his athletic ability, and he could end up as a great Penn State linebacker. And Micah Parsons, that was a coming-out game for him in the bowl game.”
Indeed, Parsons was an easy choice as the Defensive MVP in Penn State’s 53-39 Cotton Bowl victory over Memphis this past December, finishing with 14 tackles, including two sacks, along with two forced fumbles and two pass break-ups. But Ham sees comparable athleticism everywhere he looks.
“This collection of linebackers has an opportunity to be most athletic group collectively that I have seen in a long time,” he said. “They all can run. Micah Parsons and Luketa are running 4.5s out there, and Brandon Smith may be the quickest. And you are looking at probably at least a 20-pound differential in the linebacking position than when I played.”
Ham, along with fellow All-American Denny Onkotz, was there at the start of Penn State’s emergence as Linebacker U in the late 1960s. The Johnstown, Pa., native totaled 251 tackles in three starting seasons with the Nittany Lions and went on to become an eight-time Pro Bowler on a defense that led the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl championships.
Throughout the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s and into the early 2000s, Penn State continued to serve as an incubator of NFL-caliber linebacking talent. Every decade of the Paterno era featured a handful of superstars. In the 1970s, Buttle totaled an incredible 165 tackles during his junior year alone and finished his career with a then-school-record 343 stops before joining the New York Jets as a third-round draft pick and playing for nine seasons.
The biggest star of the 1980s was Conlan, the centerpiece of a defense that spearheaded Penn State’s romp to the ’86 national championship, while the ’90s were headlined by Arrington and another standout from the Pittsburgh area, Brandon Short.
After a lull in the early 2000s, Posluszny became one of the key players in Penn State’s return to form, breaking Buttle’s school record for most career tackles while helping lead the Lions to an 11-1 finish and Orange Bowl victory in 2005. He was followed by future pro standouts Lee, Connor and Bowman, and they were followed by Michael Mauti and Gerald Hodges, both of whom were taken by the Minnesota Vikings in the 2013 draft. Mauti and Hodges both finished their careers under Bill O’Brien, but they were recruited by Joe Paterno and played most of their college football during his tenure, making them perhaps the last great linebackers of the Paterno era.
It’s now been nearly a decade since that era ended, and Penn State’s production of elite linebackers has slowed. That’s partly been due to bad luck. One potentially great linebacker – Nyeem Wartman-White – was waylaid by injuries, another – Troy Reeder – transferred out, and still another – Manny Bowen – was beset by off-the-field problems. In the midst of those losses, the Lions did find a few very solid multiyear starters in the likes of Jason Cabinda, Brandon Bell and Jan Johnson, but prior to Cam Brown’s selection by the New York Giants in the third round of this year’s NFL Draft, Linebacker U hadn’t had a single linebacker chosen during the Franklin era. Since 2014, Penn State’s most successful NFL linebacker has been Mike Hull, who joined the Miami Dolphins as an undrafted free agent in 2015 and ended up spending five seasons with the team before being cut this past March.
The Lions haven’t had a linebacker taken in the first round of the draft since Arrington went to Washington with the second overall pick in 2000. That drought is assuredly going to end next year, with Parsons already labeled by some analysts as a top-10 pick. But there’s (hopefully) a lot of football to be played before the NFL starts breaking up Penn State’s current linebacker group, and the players on hand are eager to join their predecessors in the LBU pantheon.
When he was being recruited out of Louisa (Va.) High, Smith said he didn’t know much about the school’s linebacker tradition; his idol as a kid had been Baltimore Ravens Hall of Famer Ray Lewis. “I really didn’t get caught up in the history of the linebackers at each and every school,” he said. “When I committed to Penn State, I kind of started gathering more information about it. My father and my uncles grew up in that era. They weren’t really watching them, but they knew about them because of film that they’d seen or from watching games. That’s when I started getting more tied into it and knowing what’s going on.”
The sideline conversation with Arrington helped fill in some of those blanks. Said Smith, “That kind of kick started everything as far as me getting more knowledgeable about the history of the school.”
The 6-foot-3, 240-pound prospect enrolled in January 2019 and played in all 13 games as a true freshman, making 14 tackles. His highlight reel moment came early, when he lowered his shoulder and sent an Idaho receiver sprawling backward after ramming into him following a short completion late in the season opener. The hit earned Smith some internet fame, with an assist from offensive tackle C.J. Thorpe, whose stunned reaction on the sideline helped the clip go viral.
A few weeks later, Smith was moved from the Will OLB spot to Sam, where he spent the rest of the season backing up Brown. The new position didn’t faze him, because there was some carryover from the Will spot in terms of his responsibilities on certain plays. By the time Michigan visited in October for a White Out game, he felt as though he had fully adapted.
“I really felt confident whenever I was on the field that I knew what to do,” Smith said. “At first I was kind of hesitant in certain situations and was unsure on certain calls, but then right before [that game], it just clicked. I felt calm on the field, more confident, and that’s when everything started to go up for me.”
Now that Brown is off to the NFL, Smith is the favorite to start at outside linebacker, with Parsons back at the Will position and Brooks and Luketa battling for the starting spot in the middle. With Dixon, Katshir and the true freshmen supplying depth, it looks as though Penn State will be in an advantageous position whenever the current college sports shutdown ends and football activities resume. Said defensive coordinator Brent Pry, “There’s a lot of depth in the room and a lot of competition. In my experience, those are pretty good ingredients for a good unit.”
Maybe better than good. Pry noted in May that while Smith and Dixon still have plenty of learning to do, and while the competition in the middle is very much up for grabs, this year’s Nittany Lion linebacker corps could be something special.
“It’s got a chance to be a really, really nice group,” he said. “There have been some really great groups at Penn State, [and] I’d be curious, when this is all said and done, where they would stack up. I remind them of that a lot, even here recently; we went through a little segment about the commandments of great linebacker play, what I believe in. And we talked about what’s been in that room, the guys who have sat in those chairs, and the approach they took, the production they had and how they’re respected. We’ve got some work to do in that area. It’s just a high standard in that room.”
It is indeed, but it’s a standard that Smith is determined to uphold. Asked how high the ceiling is for this group, he didn’t hesitate. “The sky is the limit,” he said. “It all depends on us. How hard we work [will determine] how good we’re going to be.”
When Smith looks back on Penn State’s linebacker history, he sees not just a succession of great players, but a succession of players who, like Arrington, were willing to put in the behind-the-scenes effort necessary to play at that level. Greatness doesn’t just happen, after all. It takes total commitment on a daily basis.
“That’s what you need to do,” Smith said, “and I’m able to say that I’ll be committed to being that type of person.”
Blue White Illustrated has put the finishing touches on our latest issue, mailed to our print subscribers and on newsstands regionally this week. Our annual magazine subscribers will receive their copies in the mail soon.
THE RUNDOWN:
THE BIG PICTURE - BWI editor Matt Herb details the accountability required throughout the program to deal with progressing physically and mentally in the absence of on-campus practices this spring.
PHIL'S CORNER - Blue White Illustrated publisher Phil Grosz examines the changes to the recruiting calendar that will have an inevitable effect on how this year's Class of 2021 ultimately plays out.
RECRUITING - As always, BWI recruiting analyst Ryan Snyder has your Penn State football recruiting fix, with assists from Matt and Dave Eckert. We've got Up Close and Personal features, 10 prospects to watch for the remainder of the Class of 2021, and more!
FOOTBALL - A pandemic may have created an abrupt disruption to football, but that hasn't stopped Penn State's players from moving ahead. Matt Herb and Nate Bauer have features on P.J. Mustipher, the offensive line story you just read, a look at defensive line coach John Scott, the Nittany Lions' burgeoning linebacker corps, Penn State's wide receivers and new coach Taylor Stubblefield,
These are just a few of the many stories and features that come with every edition of Blue White Illustrated's magazine! Be sure to order your print subscription here:
Or, call our office during normal business hours at 1-800-282-1629.
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