Try Saying That Headline Three Times Fast. Then, After You Fail Miserably, Sit Back and Read our Final Blog Entry of the Season While Untwisting Your Tongue 

Unless James Franklin finds another magic lamp to rub and the Genie within grants him three MORE practices sessions –  which is apparently what happened the Saturday before last – Penn State concluded its spring football schedule Friday night under the Beaver Stadium lights.  

If we’re taking Franklin at his word(s), Penn State either had a “very good spring” or a “great spring” since the adjective-obsessed head coach used both modifiers in the span of four sentences when delivering his opening statement. Regardless, it was A spring – a FULL spring of 15 practices – which in itself is a victory considering the cancellation of 2020’s spring football festivities led to the Nittany Lions stepping on rakes for five weeks last season. 

Franklin concluded his post-practice verbal appetizer by mentioning he’ll meet with every player one-on-one and provide feedback along with a voluntary To-Do List to complete before training camp begins in August. While he handles that on a micro level, we’ll get a bit more macro and rank Penn State’s position units as they currently stand…

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Friday night football in Beaver Stadium is not exactly normal.

But it helped Penn State take another important step back toward normalcy.

The coronavirus pandemic has not yet gone away, and it might very well still be around when the Nittany Lions open the season this September. They were nonetheless able to get a full slate of practices in this spring, culminating in Friday’s session open to media members, recruits, senior students, and (thanks to a spur-of-the-moment PR move that was either insane or genius) a few fans who spotted the ads for free tickets the team put out on Thursday night.

The fans who first came and were first served lucked out with the weather, a gorgeous sunset capping off a cool-but-not-cold April evening, and were treated to, by all accounts … well, another spring practice. Some highlight-reel plays, some head-scratchers, watered-down schemes, etc. Getting to watch football practice at a big-time program on occasion, as any reporter will tell you, is a treat; watching it on a regular basis is tedium.

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First rule of the Blue-White Game: Don’t draw any firm conclusions.

This Kalen King dude, though, isn’t leaving us with much choice.

The buzz around Penn State’s impressive freshman cornerback, which has been growing throughout the spring, approached Apache helicopter levels on Saturday during the Nittany Lions’ annual spring scrimmage/exhibition for freshmen students and media afternoon practice. King turned in a pick six and another interception – of presumptive starter Sean Clifford – in the end zone and made his presence felt as a blitzer as well.

Although it’s tempting and likely prudent to say that any performance in any spring game isn’t worth the paper this blog column isn’t printed on, Saturday was just another sign that King could soon be a force to be reckoned with on a Penn State defense that hasn’t had a lot of those forces recently.

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Introduction

Welcome to Part 2 of our in-depth look at Penn State’s defense since the promotion of Brent Pry to Defensive Coordinator in 2016. In Part 1 we analyzed the Nittany Lions’ performance in standard statistical categories and compared those numbers against the rest of the Big Ten over the past 5 seasons (2016 – 2020). The main takeaway was that the “bend, don’t break” reputation that the Penn State defense has earned recently is deserved. Pry’s group tends to give up a fair number of total yards but does an excellent job of preventing teams from scoring and limiting big plays (the low YPP). Additionally, Pry’s teams have been better than average on 3rd down and generating Havoc plays in the form of sacks, tackles for loss, and fumbles. 

Today, we will take a deeper look at the defensive performance in some of the more advanced statistical measurements. Again, all stats herein are only for conference games from 2016-2020. 

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