Sunday Column: Penn State’s Defense Might Be Underappreciated, But It Definitely Isn’t Overworked
Stats are fun. Stats of both the basic and advanced varieties can, if interpreted the right way, tell you a lot about a team. The ways that most sports are played and coached today are as influenced by statistics as they’ve ever been, and that includes football, perhaps the last bastion of the old-school, “go with your gut” mindset that sounds cool but doesn’t really mean anything unless you win the game.
A lack of stats can also be very telling … but not always in obvious ways.
Take the Big Ten defensive statistics, for example. The list of the top 25 leading tacklers does not include a single Penn State player, nor do the lists of leaders in passes defended or interceptions. No Nittany Lion has more than 2.5 sacks, and only Zane Durant (4.5) and Adisa Isaac (4.0) are among the top 25 in the conference in tackles for loss. In fact, Penn State’s leading tackler through five games, Curtis Jacobs, has 11 fewer stops than the 25th player on the conference tackles list, Michigan State’s Dillon Tatum, and 44 fewer than the Big Ten leader, Iowa’s Jay Higgins.
Why? Penn State’s defense simply doesn’t spend a lot of time on the field these days.
The Nittany Lions have allowed fewer passing yards and fewer rushing yards than any team in the conference. They lead the nation in total yards allowed per game, with 210.6. They are also on the field less than any defense in the nation, thanks to both their allergy to surrendering first downs (third nationally, just 58 all season) and an offense that has been more ball-control than ballin’.
Have they shut down great offenses? Not yet … because they haven’t faced one. Have they made every offense they’ve played look basically helpless for the majority of the game? Every week.
Manny Diaz’s unit has gotten it done with aggressive blitzing and with dropping multiple defenders, including some of the big uglies up front, into coverage. They’ve gotten production from the stars, the would-be stars, and the backups. No, you won’t find any Nittany Lions among the Big Ten sacks leaders but as a team, they’ve put up 4 per game, which ties them for the second-best average in FBS.
This has been a dominant unit, so dominant that it is both propping up its own still-in-first-gear offense and simultaneously making that group look feeble by comparison, if only because that offense isn’t rising to the same level of dominance. It has given the offense, and the team in general, a no-pressure environment for 60 minutes. Have to punt? The defense will get your back. Miss a field goal? Wait a few plays, the defense will get you a turnover. Fumble the ball on the opening kickoff? The defense will give up three, not seven. Penn State’s offense ranks 12th in the nation in scoring but only 41st in total yardage. Forget flipping the field; Penn State’s defense is essentially tilting it 10 degrees from end zone to end zone.
As the Nittany Lions come out of their bye week and prepare for the big games that will define their season, it is difficult to predict exactly what they are going to give you offensively on any given night. Penn State appeared to have turned a corner with a superbly balanced game against Iowa only to turn around and look disjointed and flat for the majority of the Northwestern game. Drew Allar is still finding his footing even as his powers grow, and the running game has mostly put the “meh” in methodical despite the two-headed beast of Singleton and Allen.
With the defense, though, you know pretty much what you’re gonna get, even if the opposing quarterback—or coordinator—often has no idea. The real sticklers can find a missed tackle here, a silly penalty there, a receiver left open on an incomplete pass that might be six if it were Marvin Harrison running the route, but at the end of each game, the statistics and the scoreboard have left no doubt that the Nittany Lions won the day. Like the offense, the defense hasn’t had to play a four-quarter game, and while there is some merit to the argument that such a test might be beneficial before the Nittany Lions find themselves in a last-second thriller like the one Ohio State played against Notre Dame, the flip side is that the starting unit has very little wear and tear on it as it enters October, nor has it had to show very much of Diaz’s deep and versatile playbook.
So sure, it would be fun if Chop Robinson puts in one of those three-game, six-sack stretches he is capable of, if Kalen King breaks up five passes while covering Harrison or if Abdul Carter puts up a 15-tackle effort in a big win against Michigan. It just might take one or more of those big individual stat-line performances for Penn State to prevail on the biggest stages. But the best current defense in the country and maybe the best defense this storied program has had in quite a while would probably be just as content to continue spending most of the game on the sideline.
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