Sunday Column – Line ‘Em Up: Lions’ Remade Defensive Front Could Make or Break Season

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.

Collectively, these players represent a delightful potpourri of levels of experience, shapes and sizes, and athletic abilities. Historically, new defensive coordinator Manny Diaz is a four-down-linemen kinda guy, so it stands to reason we won’t see any more than four of these players on the field at any one time, with the possible exceptions of goal-line stand calls and 12-men-on-the-field situations. But who plays when—and with whom—could very well be the X-factor for a Penn State team that doesn’t appear to have many glaring weaknesses.

The last Penn State position group to undergo such a drastic one-year change, at least from a personnel standpoint, was the 2005 team, which added wide receivers Derrick Williams, Deon Butler and Jordan Norwood, all of whom would go on to finish among the top five in program history in career receptions (plus moonlighting corner Justin King) to a position group that, in 2003 and 2004, had been one of the least dynamic to wear the blue and white in the modern era.

Those players, with no small help from veteran quarterback Michael Robinson, transformed not only Penn State’s offense but the entire team, as the Nittany Lions won their first Big Ten title in more than a decade. What was interesting about that group is that no one really saw it coming. Williams was the fiveiest of five-stars, yes, but Norwood was a walk-on and Butler was a converted cornerback AND a walk-on. And yet they took the Big Ten by storm, providing a wonderful mix of downfield threat (Butler), slick intermediate receiving (Norwood) and routes run from all over the field (Williams) to support a strong running game and a lights-out defense.

The 2022 defensive line is, comparatively speaking, more of a known commodity. Mustipher missed the final seven games with a knee injury, but prior to that he had been arguably the best lineman on the team and in the midst of a breakout year. Isaac seemed poised for a breakout year of his own last summer before an Achilles injury sidelined him for a full season, and Beamon has been impressive in practice for a couple of years now. Robinson, who had been pursued by Penn State’s coaching staff on the recruiting trail, was a four-star prospect who showed promise as a backup with the Terps in 2021. And, though Drew Allar and Nick Singleton headlined Penn State’s class of 2022, Dennis-Sutton was the top-rated prospect in the class.

The fun part of college football is never truly knowing, whether you’re the guy in section NG who has to look up the jersey number or the assistant coach whose job is to develop those players, which of them will pan out, or how long it will take them to develop. And the road from ‘just a guy’ to NFL draft choice isn’t always a long one for defensive linemen. Aaron Maybin had 12 tackles in 2007 and 12 sacks in 2008. Carl Nassib had two sacks combined in his first two seasons, then 15 ½ in 2015.

Given the way the rest of the team is constructed, the defensive line will play a huge role in whatever success it is or isn’t able to achieve. Man-for-man, Penn State might be more talented at cornerback than any position, but even the best corners can look average without a pass rush. The Nittany Lions have plenty of uncertainty at linebacker following the departures of Luketa, Ellis Brooks, and Brandon Smith, and keeping them free of blockers will ease the pressure on that group. Diaz is known for his aggressive playcalling, but any defensive coach knows if you can get home with four you can blitz when you want to instead of when you have to. And although it isn’t hard to envision the offense making some strides this fall, that unit will likely have its ceiling capped by both the limitations of the offensive line and the consistent inconsistency of Sean Clifford.

The best-case outcomes for the Nittany Lions are that one of the ends (Robinson? Isaac?) can give them a similar threat to the one Ebiketie provided off the edge last year, that Mustipher shows no ill effects of his injury and picks up right where he left off last October and that Beamon and/or Durant cause enough havoc next to him to ensure the ends have one-on-one opportunities. But even if this unit doesn’t somehow evolve overnight into the 2021 Georgia front four, Penn State could still have a big year if it can get contributions from enough players that there is marginal drop-off from the starters to the second or even third guys in the rotation—and that all of those players can win more battles than they lose.

Scott doesn’t care where the sacks and pressures come from, only that they come. A by-committee approach from the front four can do just as much damage as one or two stars emerging, if not more. But given the group they’ve (re)assembled, the Nittany Lions have to like their chances of at least one of those things happening in 2022.