The casual Nittany Lion fan will be forgiven if he has to reach for the team roster more often than usual this September to match jersey numbers with names along Penn State’s defensive line.

If the Nittany Lions are lucky, at least a couple of those numbers will become quite familiar to opposing coaches who have to scout the Penn State defense.

Just about every position group is breaking in one or two new faces this fall, as is commonplace in this transfer-happy era of college football, but defensive line coach John Scott’s collection of ends and tackles takes the turnover to another level.

Gone are Arnold Ebiketie, Derrick Tangelo and sometimes-linebacker Jesse Luketa. Back from injury are Adisa Isaac and P.J. Mustipher. Back from some other form of exile is Hakeem Beamon. In from the Maryland Terrapins is Chop Robinson, and in from the high school ranks are Dani Dennis Sutton, Zane Durant and Kaleb Artis (alas, Ken Talley, we knew thee not that well). And then there are returnees like Nick Tarburton, Smith Vilbert, Coziah Izzard and Dvon Ellies.

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Introduction

From Tuscaloosa to Los Angeles to Pittsburgh and all points in between, now is the time when every college football fanbase throws probability out the window, plugs their collective ears from listening to the voices of reason, and mentally crafts a path to the College Football Playoff…no matter how absurd or unlikely the route. Of course, the same applies in State College. The ho-hum mood that hung over Nittany Lions loyalists for the summer months has given way to unbridled optimism following the cliché grab-bag of media day and the release of that one clip where Kaytron Allen snatches Mehki Flowers’ soul (poor guy). For now, it’s OK to close your eyes and dream of spending early January fighting the traffic hellscape that is Inglewood, California at 4 pm on a Monday. Ahh, glorious isn’t it?

(Snaps Fingers)

Unfortunately, today’s ABC entry isn’t tailored for those with their head in the clouds. No, it’s rooted in reality and a bunch of math. Like we did around this time last year, we used our proprietary algorithm to calculate the win probability and a consensus final score of Penn State’s 12 regular season contests in 2022.

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Media Days have come and gone. The NFL preseason is underway. Real, honest-to-goodness football is oh so close, and so is a big year for James Franklin and Penn State.

The Nittany Lions have one of the most experienced quarterbacks in college football history, some explosive young athletes in the backfield, a reshuffled offensive line that will probably be the subject of only four or five of these columns this fall, an intriguing collection of both returning and new talent along the defensive line, and what could be one of the best secondaries they’ve ever had.

They should also have a collective chip on their shoulders the size of Landon Tengwall after consecutive seasons of five or more losses. How and why Penn State came up so curiously and consistently short has already been written to death. Today, we will examine how Franklin and his team can end that surprising and sobering stretch of mediocrity.

With apologies to the famed 21^st century philosopher William Martin Joel, it’s a matter of trust.

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Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2022 preseason coverage is sponsored by FANATICS. Spare the embarrassment of showing up to Beaver Stadium in LAST year’s sweat- & alcohol-stained gear. Grab something fresh from our collection of Penn State jerseys, T-shirts, and more right HERE.

Same deal as yesterday’s offense article. For those diligent FTB readers, no need to explain the format or premise of this blog post. You know the drill. Gold star for you. For those who didn’t bother reading Monday’s ‘End-of-Season Starting Lineup: Offense’ well, I hope you have a doctor’s note or some other valid excuse for your absence.

DE: Adisa Isaac

Isaac was anointed a future first-round pick by a former Nittany Lion before last year’s medical redshirt depreciated his NFL stock a bit. Five-star freshman Dani Dennis-Sutton is nipping at his heels and by the end of this sentence you won’t be able to say I didn’t mention Smith Vilbert’s name. Adisa’s a man on a mission, though; he’ll come by this spot honestly.

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Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2022 preseason coverage is sponsored by FANATICS. Spare the embarrassment of showing up to Beaver Stadium in LAST year’s sweat- & alcohol-stained gear. Grab something fresh from our collection of Penn State jerseys, T-shirts, and more right HERE.

Warning: The superstitious should skip this article.

The reason? Well, because in the next dozen or so paragraphs we’re going to tempt fate and gaze in the future to predict the Nittany Lions’ starting lineup for the FINAL game of 2022. Yes, you read that correctly – the FINAL game of 2022, presumably a bowl game that (fingers crossed) will be played in 2023.

Around this time every preseason, several publications – be they physical or digital – print out their thoughts regarding Penn State’s Week 1 projected starters. To us, that seems kind of boring, especially since the lone up-in-the-air position battle on offense is whether Sal Wormley or Hunter Nourzad will line up at right guard four Thursdays from now. Instead, we’re projecting four months from now – Who opts-out? Which young player beats out a veteran early-season starter? That sort of thing.

For context, last year only 4 Penn State offensive players that started Week 1 at Wisconsin started in the same spot on January 1 vs. Arkansas…so there’s something to this exercise. One thing we’re not doing, though, is predicting injuries. Not putting that negative energy out in the universe.

So find some salt, spill it, then throw it over your left shoulder … Ok, ready? Let’s tuck in.

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Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2022 preseason coverage is sponsored by FANATICS. Spare the embarrassment of showing up to Beaver Stadium in LAST year’s sweat- & alcohol-stained gear. Grab something fresh from our collection of Penn State jerseys, T-shirts, and more right HERE.

Introduction

In the spring we looked at offensive explosivity from a new lens as the rate a team score touchdowns from outside of the red zone. We referred to that new metric as TORZ. Today, we flip the script and look at a defense’s ability to prevent opposing offenses for scoring beyond the red zone.

Defensive explosivity allowed is something that is not often discussed as a common statistic and metric. But, just as some offenses are more explosive than others, as we outlined in our TORZ post a few months ago, and that this offensive explosivity is reproducible for the best team (see: Ohio State), we would expect that a defense’s ability to PREVENT or LIMIT explosivity is also a repeatable skill. Teams, like Iowa for example under defensive coordinator Phil Parker, have garner big-play-prevention reputations over the years. Which leads us to the $64,000 question: Just because a defense can stop big scoring plays from happening, does that mean they’re actually a good defense?

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Don’t call last year a disappointment. The Nittany Lions didn’t lose a game by more than four points – if you overlook the scoop-and-score from the OSU game and consider the Opt-out Bowl an outlier. Twelve student-athletes graduated to NFL rosters, eight by way of the draft. Most importantly: 15 current and former Penn State players received diplomas this past May.

Is it possible to lose half your defense to the NFL one year and have a better team the season after? Ok, that’s a loaded question; I’ll scrape off some of the sour cream and bacon bits. I’ve graded and ranked each position group of Penn State’s 2022 roster. After doing so, one thing is clear: James Franklin’s team will have a very different identity come the first of September.

Scale: F – Unacceptable, D – Below-the-line, C – Average, B – Good, A – Great

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