By Kyle Golik
Most teams across the country would not survive losing a player to the caliber of junior safety Kevin Winston Jr., but most teams don’t possess the talent Penn State has. Winston got injured against Bowling Green, an injury Penn State head coach James Franklin has deemed “long-term” in nature. Following Winston’s departure, Penn State struggled to contain Bowling Green and barely scraped by against the Group of 5 opponent, winning 34-27. It was hard to glean much from Kent State, they didn’t bring a full fleet of players, and injuries to their top two starting quarterbacks ended any chance for Kent State to threaten Penn State.
Illinois was the first true test Penn State’s defense had to see if Tom Allen could maintain what was started by Manny Diaz in 2022 being amongst the best in the nation. It seemed early Illinois gave Penn State fits, this rang true on the only explosive play Penn State would allow against Illinois where running back Josh McCray took a Luke Altmyer swing pass on a third and 21 deep in their own territory and took advantage of a bad read from strong safety Zakee Wheatley to get a 30-yard reception.
That play started what could have been a huge momentum swing for Illinois but the Fighting Illini couldn’t capitalize on the situation on that drive. The last gasp of Illinois truly having any momentum came on their ensuing possession where they were able to drive convincingly against a Penn State defense that was vulnerable.
While the defense bent it didn’t break, and leveraging the “White Out Energy” and the 12th Man, forcing a few procedure calls and a bad snap, Illinois kicker David Olano, who has been reliable, missed a 45-yard field goal and any momentum Illinois captured had been fully ceded back to the Nittany Lions.
Following that miss, the Penn State defense put the vice grips on Illinois, allowing only 39 yards of total offense the rest of the game.
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After the game, Franklin assessed the transformation his defense made
“A couple things. I think the first thing is that we did a better job on first down. So, what happens then, you’re able to extend drives. So, we’re much better. Again, back to the 34 yards rushing. They averaged 1.1 yards per carry so that set everything else up. From there, we know that we’re going to get slants and RPO glances because we play a heavy man coverage with outside leverage, so we get a ton of that. And we’ve got to do a great job of getting our hands up to bat those balls down.”
“We’ve got to make sure we tackle, but they’re going to make their plays because they’re on scholarship as well, but ultimately, we made them one-dimensional. When you’re able to do that, you’ve got a chance to be successful. So, the exciting thing back to Richard’s point and really a lot of your guys’ point, there’s a lot of things that I think are easily correctable and we’ve got to get them fixed. And that’s coming from a defense that held that offense to 219 total yards and 34 rushing.”
The previous week, I spoke to EDGE Rusher Abdul Carter and asked him about the relentless double teams he has been encountering all season, “I just keep doing my job. If they are doubling me that means they are leaving my teammates one-on-one which I will take all day and they are making sure they win their one-on-one. When I get my one-on-one I am going to win.”
While Carter wasn’t getting to the quarterback often, his teammates weren’t missing Carter’s impact. “I feel like his impact has always been the same as it is now. Even in the games where he didn’t have the stats. It’s Abdul Carter at the end of the day,” senior safety Jaylen Reed said.
Against Illinois, Carter had his best game of the season, fully realizing what potential Franklin had when he shifted Carter to the EDGE. Carter finished with two sacks, eight quarterback pressures, and was graded by PFF 90.9% pass rush grade, and had a 24% win rate.
Speaking with Carter this week after his monster game, Carter was feeling the confidence after his monster performance. “Just got to keep growing, keep learning, just keep getting better. Keep taking these weeks week by week, just stack days, stack weeks, to get better. Like I said, you haven’t seen the best of me yet.”
What isn’t the best yet for the Nittany Lion defense is the penalties. Franklin has been adamant about it and it’s a reoccurring issue.
“I don’t like them. I don’t like them at all, to be honest with you. If you look at the analytics and the statistics, they don’t really have a significant impact when you talk about winning and losing, but as a head coach, it embarrasses me, because it shows a lack of discipline and it’s sloppy and it makes things harder than it needs to be, Franklin said following Bowling Green, “I’m going to hold the staff accountable to it. We’re going to get it fixed. I’m totally bald now. I’m basically gray, so there’s not a whole lot left I can lose. I guess, gain weight, eating from stress and embarrassment of penalties. But I ain’t got a whole lot left, you know, in terms of what else, right? Maybe gray eyebrows, that’s probably the last thing that goes but I’m not happy about it at all. So we’re going to have a lot of discussions about it as a staff, and we’re going to work on getting it fixed.”
Penn State was better in some areas of being disciplined but still had costly mental mistakes:
- An AJ Harris pick-six was nullified by an illegal block in the back by sophomore defensive back Zion Tracy.
- The false start epidemic continues, Penn State had three called against them this week, with two being enforced, the third was declined due to a pass interference call that happened on the same play.
- Linebacker Tony Rojas’ unnecessary roughness call, which was highly questionable something Franklin referred to as “bulls*it calls” during his halftime radio interview.
Franklin said postgame “The ball’s going down the sideline, and he’s going to make the tackle, and somebody comes to block him, and he lowers his shoulder and destroys the guy. What? ‘Cause Tony Rojas is bigger than the guy that was trying to block him? He’s chasing the ball. What’s he supposed to do? He’s going to make a tackle.Someone’s coming to block him just because he absolutely destroyed him. It’s a penalty? It’s not our fault. And what I was told is that he peeled back to knock somebody out. If the run’s going that way, why would you peel back to make a block? It just doesn’t make sense from a commonsense perspective, and I watched the play.”
Overall, Franklin is still taking ownership of the discipline issues.
“You guys have heard me say before, the ones I struggle with is, right now, we’ve got a reputation for jumping offsides, and they know it, and they’re going to keep doing it until we get it cleaned up. So that’s got us. And the reality is, as good as we played, we made it a lot harder than it needed to be with silly penalties, and that’s all me, like this whole yelling at the kids. That’s on me and us as coaches. We’ve got to provide more discipline all the time, not just punitive penalties when they jump offsides, being more disciplined about how they are in meetings, how they sit up, how they take notes, all of that. And I believe the more discipline that we have off the field will transfer on the field. And that’s my job.”
Penn State fans can expect the defense to be successful, the tools are there. That success will always be in doubt if Penn State cannot clean up the discipline issues. Winston was dynamic for the Nittany Lions, but even against West Virginia there were the procedure calls going against them. That may be the aggressive nature Franklin has to live with this group, they are going to push it to the edge and maybe that is how their success is defined.
