Progress Report: Assessing Penn State's defense & special teams

And so it begins.

The Big Ten season will start for Penn State on Friday when it travels to Maryland. It’s one of the first games of the upcoming college football weekend, but not one of the first of the conference season, as Big Ten play began in earnest last week while the Nittany Lions were off. Already, some of the trendy preseason picks to meet in Indianapolis in December – we’re looking at you Michigan and Nebraska – have shown some serious signs of vulnerability, while two teams that by now could probably find Lucas Oil Stadium blindfolded – Ohio State and Wisconsin – appear to be as formidable as ever.

So where does Penn State fit into that mix? We really don’t know what to make of the Nittany Lions just yet. They’ve played only three games, and one was against a Football Championship Subdivision opponent that wasn’t equipped to compete at their level. The Lions’ season-opening 79-7 victory over Idaho was unrevealing and may actually have muddied the picture by making the team’s statistical profile look better than it really should.

But the Lions did play a Power Five opponent in week three, holding off a Pitt team that would go on to end UCF’s 27-game regular-season win streak a week later. So it’s not as if there aren’t any useful data points to consider.

After breaking down the offense Wednesday, here’s a position-by-position look at the defense and special teams heading into Friday's Big Ten opener:

IN THE SPOTLIGHT Yetur Gross-Matos is averaging 1.17 sacks per game to rank third in the Big Ten, although 2.5 of his 3.5 sacks to date were against Idaho.

KEY STAT After amassing seven sacks vs. Idaho in week one, the Lions totaled only four in their next two games vs. Buffalo and Pitt.

FRANKLIN SAYS “We’ve got to get to the quarterback more consistently. We came into the season really feeling like that was going to be a strength of ours and it hasn’t necessarily shown up that way. We’ll study that, and make sure we’re doing the things that we think we’ve got the guys to do. But we haven’t gotten the pressure that we think we should get.”

COMMENT Regarding the pass rush, Franklin’s comments following the Pitt game don’t need a lot of elaboration. The Lions need to do better here. Full stop. But on a more positive note, they have done a very effective job against the run in two of their three games, allowing a total of only 25 rushing yards vs. Idaho and Pitt. They did give up 184 rushing yards to Buffalo, so the nonconference season wasn’t an unqualified success. But with Robert Windsor and Antonio Shelton looking solid, P.J. Mustipher having emerged as a force and Fred Hansard back from the leg injury that ended his 2018 season prematurely, you have to like how things are shaping up here.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT Micah Parsons made the first big defensive play of the season, stopping Idaho’s Logan Kendall cold on fourth-and-short in the first quarter of the season opener. Through three games, the sophomore outside linebacker already has four tackles for loss, one short of his 13-game total from last season.

KEY STAT The Lions’ top three tacklers are all linebackers. Starting middle linebacker Jan Johnson is first with 21 stops, while Parsons is second with 20 and Cam Brown third with 18.

FRANKLIN SAYS “[Johnson] has been a culture-driver for us. That’s a term that I really like in our program, and I think Jan is that type of guy. Our players get a little sick of us, me and Coach [Brent] Pry, talking about Jan Johnson, but it’s a great story. It’s a great story for college football. It’s a great story for Penn State. His leadership, him and Cam Brown at the linebacker position, the leadership that they provide for our entire defense, and [Garrett Taylor] on the back end, all of it, it’s going to be really important, because we do have a young team.”

COMMENT A year ago, Penn State’s linebackers combined to make 18.5 tackles for loss. This year, through three games, the linebackers already have nine TFL between them. As expected, the starting threesome has been solid, and the early peeks we’ve gotten of true freshman Brandon Smith suggest that he’s going to be another difference-maker once he gains some experience. Idaho’s Kiahn Martinez got a little more than a peek, as Smith dropped his shoulder and slammed into the freshman running back late in the game in one of the season’s hardest hits.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT John Reid has both of the Nittany Lions’ interceptions this season, one of which he returned 36 yards for a game-changing touchdown early in the second half against Buffalo.

KEY STAT The Lions are allowing opponents to complete 61.5 percent of their passing attempts, the third-highest rate in the Big Ten behind Northwestern (62.6 percent) and, surprisingly, Michigan (66.1 percent). However, Penn State has surrendered only two passing touchdowns, which is tied for the league’s lowest total.

FRANKLIN SAYS “We think that we’ve got two of the better corners in the country, we really do, not just the conference, but the country, and they are playing with a lot of confidence right now. They are really playing well in both the run and pass game.”

COMMENT The Nittany Lions got lit up by Pitt, but to borrow an oft-heard phrase from the waning years of the Paterno era, sometimes you’ve got to give credit to the other guy. Kenny Pickett played the game of his life, and the Panthers also boast one of the better wide receiver tandems Penn State will likely see all year in Taysir Mack and Maurice Ffrench. When you think about what Pitt did to UCF a week later, racking up 439 yards of total offense and 30 first downs against an opponent that hadn’t lost a regular-season game since 2016, Pickett’s 372-yard outburst in Beaver Stadium doesn’t look quite so unsightly. The Lions have got to do a better job in third-and-long situations in which they seemingly have the upper hand. But if they can get off the field with more alacrity, this unit looks as though it has the potential to shine.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT Jordan Stout has been everything the Nittany Lions had hoped he would be, and then some. Not only has he transformed kickoffs from a liability into a strength, he’s hit two field goals of more than 50 yards, including a school-record 57-yarder vs. Pitt.

KEY STAT Twenty-four of Stout’s 25 kickoffs have been touchbacks. None have been returned.

FRANKLIN SAYS “I remember on the headset, coaches were talking about [Dan] Chisena being tired because he was on four special teams units [against Idaho]. I said, ‘What about Stout’s leg?’ He had a really good game for us.”

COMMENT Joe Lorig’s tenure as special teams coordinator is off to a pretty good start. As noted above, Stout’s kickoffs have been excellent, and he and Jake Pinegar have combined to go 5 for 5 on field goal attempts. Moreover, Blake Gillikin had an outstanding day vs. Pitt, pinning the Panthers inside their 20-yard line on six of his seven attempts. The Lions haven’t made any decisive plays in the return game yet; in fact, they rank last in the Big Ten with a 14.3-yard average on kickoff returns. But with KJ Hamler back deep on punts and kicks, it might only be a matter of time.