Previously: PSU Offense 

In comparison to the Penn State offense, the defense that we will cover today is fearsome. They are 4th in SP+ defense and have held opponents to just 11.89 points per game this season, third best in the NCAA. Star players with NFL interest are apparent across the depth chart. How scared should we be?

 

The Film: Like every B1G team, Penn State has mostly faced garbage offenses, limiting our options here. The best three choices are Maryland, West Virginia, and Ohio State, one of which is a vastly better offense than the others. The Buckeye offense may not be as good as it once was, but they are still by far the best offense of those three, so like in the previous piece, we're rolling with the OSU-PSU tape. 

Personnel: Click for big. 

Much of the success for the PSU defense this season has come from the dominant play of its defensive line, especially at the EDGE position, where the production has largely been sterling. Hype has been given most prominently to Chop Robinson, the fearsome passrusher with 1st round NFL Draft attention. Robinson got hurt against OSU but may be set to return this weekend against Michigan. The Nittanys haven't been much worse off without Robinson thanks to the development of EDGE defenders Dani Dennis-Sutton, a former 5*, and Adisa Isaac, a 5th year player who I previously didn't think much of but who has made a nice leap this season. Against all non-OSU teams, these three players have feasted and wrecked OL after OL. They met more of a challenge in the Shoe, but still had some success. 

The defensive tackle spot was a bit of a relative weakness last season for Penn State, which I think is still probably true but they have had one player emerge in Zane Durant. He's a star in my and PFF's view, the first at that position for PSU since PJ Mustipher years ago. The other players next to Durant are just guys and potential vulnerabilities, Hakeem Beamon, Dvon Ellies, and (especially) Coziah Izzard, the lone player to get a cyan on our diagram. Ohio State did have some success running up the middle against some of these players and we will dig into that as we go. 

PSU usually plays in a 4-2-5, meaning there are two traditional ILBs, but sometimes they do slink into a 4-3. Curtis Jacobs and Abdul Carter are the starters, rock solid players but a little below star caliber to me. Carter is the better pass-rusher of the two, used often as a blitzer by DC Manny Diaz, while Jacobs also rushes a decent amount. Tackling and coverage dock them a bit and keep them below getting the star, but I like both players. Neither backup is bad either, Tyler Elsdon and Kobe King. King is the much more used backup and can slide in seamlessly without much notice. 

At corner, the performance of the much hyped Kalen King is something that will be discussed in this piece. I was incredibly high on King coming into the season, but he has put up lackluster PFF grades and to put it plainly, he was terrible against Ohio State. His shield has been taken away, though he is still in the first round of some NFL mock drafts. The corner opposite King, replacing Joey Porter Jr., is Johnny Dixon and he's been excellent this season. The same could be said for nickel Daequan Hardy. Both Hardy and Dixon showed out against Ohio State and earned my respect. PSU rides the three starters hard at corner, but Cam Miller is the next man up at the position. 

The safeties are SS Jaylen Reed (not to be confused with the ex-MSU WR Jayden Reed) and at FS either Keaton Ellis or Kevin Winston Jr.. All of these players have been pretty good this year, a bit below star caliber but certainly not a weak spot. Zakee Wheatley is the fourth safety and he's in the same bucket in terms of performance. Safety is not the strength of the defense, but far from a weak spot. There aren't too many of those on this unit. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: they defend]

Base set: As I stated, PSU mostly ran a 4-2-5 against Ohio State to deal with the Bucks' spread passing offense: 

They generally went 4-3 when Ohio State went to 12 personnel, so anticipate a good bit of that against Michigan: 

The most interesting deviation from these base looks was on 3rd & long, where PSU went with 3 down linemen (all EDGEs), two LBs lined up at the line, and then six DBs all lined up mostly deep: 

Pressure: Penn State was decently blitzy in this game, rushing more than four players on 37.8% of snaps that I charted against Ohio State. Compared to last year, that's a notch above what I had the Nittany Lions at when I clocked them in at 29%. Also like last year, they almost never dropped eight and only rushed three. Last year I had them at only 4% snaps, this year was a goose egg- 0%. This is a team that likes to bring pressure and they like to mix up where it comes from and disguise it. 

Man or zone coverage: Against Ohio State, Penn State played a lot of man coverage, usually with one deep safety (fitting in the Cover1 bucket broadly). They mix coverages around, so we described them on the diagram as "Mixed Man". There was some zone against the Buckeyes, but it was definitely more firmly in the man bucket overall, which will be discussed with decent length in the overview section. 

Dangerman: On a defense as good and as talented as Penn State's there were plenty of options here. Pre-season I expected the Dangerman to be Kalen King, but it is definitely not for reasons we have briefly mentioned and will explore more in detail later. Thus, I'm going with EDGE Chop Robinson, even if he is perhaps banged up. The pass-rush wizard has garnered 1st round NFL Draft hype and even though he didn't play close to a full game against OSU, he was PSU's most consistently dangerous rusher on a per-snap basis. 

His burst off the snap here is superb: 

EDGE #44 to the bottom 

Blows right by Cade Stover and slams into one of the pulling linemen, throwing the timing of this whole play off and dramatically reducing its possibilities. On the very next snap Chop bullrushes LT Josh Simmons right back into Kyle McCord: 

EDGE #44 to the bottom

Since he didn't play a ton of the game I charted, I will have to dip into the footage from last year to finish this section but thankfully there was plenty. I still have a clip of him strip-sacking the Auburn QB from last season: 

And here's the full 2022 highlight reel: 

Given that we saw some wobbles from Michigan's tackles last week against Purdue's tandem of electric EDGE rushers, Barnhart and Henderson will be in for another test against Chop Robinson (and the others) tomorrow. 

 

Overview 

Against Ohio State on October 21, Penn State's defense held the Buckeye offense to 365 total yards on 4.8 yards per play. Good? Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty solid showing against the #16 SP+ offense in the country. What can be learned from this game? A pretty good amount. 

As always, we'll look at both the run defense and the pass defense and since Ohio State is more of a threat in the latter, let's start in that department. The Buckeyes were without #2 receiver Emeka Egbuka, so it was a bit different of a receiving group and that's a big loss to point out- Egbuka is a clear cut above any of the other WRs on OSU's depth chart not named Marvin Harrison Jr.. The absence of Egbuka made the job of the Penn State corners a decent bit easier, especially the non-Kalen King corners (who was often matched up on MHJ), and to their credit, they crushed it! 

We can start on the outside with Johnny Dixon, a wily veteran and one-time South Carolina transfer. He has replaced Joey Porter Jr., a near first-round pick (34th overall), with flying colors and looked excellent in this game. Here he is with coverage on Julian Fleming: 

Dixon is of note not just for his fine play this season but his role in the defense, as Dixon is the most likely of the corners to be blitzing. PFF records him with 24 pass rush snaps this season to 13 and 6 for the other starting corners/nickels. A couple of those snaps were against OSU, where Manny Diaz used Dixon as the primary corner blitzer: 

#3 blitzing to the bottom

As for the rest of that clip... yeah, Marvin Harrison Jr. is an alien. We'll get back to that in a moment. The other player who excelled against Ohio State in the secondary was nickel Daequan Hardy, also a 5th year player. He had a few issues with tackling but also a couple highlight reel PBUs when matched up with blue chip freshman WR Carnell Tate. Here's one: 

The coverage all around was in general really good in this game, except for one prominent area, which was Kalen King on Marvin Harrison Jr. Look, playing mostly man coverage on Marvin Harrison Jr. was a largely nonsensical tactical decision by the coaching staff, but King also put up very little fight against MHJ. I showed you the previous clip, but there was a lot of easy money for Harrison vs. King: 

King also committed the somewhat iffy holding call on Harrison Jr. that overturned the potentially game-changing defensive touchdown, which was possibly the biggest play of the game. I'd have preferred the referees to keep the flag in their pocket on that one. On the other hand, if King just doesn't grab him, there wouldn't have been a flag at all. King was dealt an extremely difficult hand in having to cover Marvin Harrison Jr., one of the best WRs to come through college in my lifetime, mostly 1-on-1, but more concerning was King's performances against non-MHJ receivers. Hardy and Dixon were locking up Julian Fleming, but King got cooked by him too: 

CB #4 to the bottom

There was another play in which Fleming beat King that was called back due to a hold. 

I was as big of a Kalen King fan as anyone coming into this season, but his play in this game, while a low bar for the season, isn't completely out of character. Among all regular rotational players on this PSU defense, King is PFF's worst graded player by a country mile and his coverage grades for this season are not particularly good, even excepting this debacle against an NFL-bound mutant: 

You don't want a potential 1st round corner to have a 53.0 coverage grade over nearly 232 coverage snaps!! This is why we had to take the shield- and the star- off Kalen King. I still think he's got much better play in him, but he was Penn State's worst defensive player in the game I charted and there wasn't a close second. 

Put another way, when Kyle McCord was targeting Hardy and Dixon, he was 7/16 for 45 yards (2.8 Y/A). When targeting Kalen King, he was 7/8 for 102 yards (12.8 Y/A). Ruh roh!! Again, a good chunk of that is Marvin Harrison Jr. being Marvin Harrison Jr. but it's not the entirety of the story. The other thing that did hurt Penn State in coverage was when Ryan Day went back to the well of "things that got Don Brown fired from Michigan". You will NOT enjoy watching this clip: 

It is the year 2023. If you are getting beaten by Ryan Day because it's man coverage (with a LB!!!!) vs. crossing routes, you don't know ball. I'm sorry, it has to be said. 

OSU's dagger TD was also Marvin Harrison Jr. on a crossing route: 

*facepalm* 

But look, when Penn State was not doing that, they were generally pretty darn good in pass coverage. I don't have many negative notes on the safeties. Not a ton got to them, but they were pretty good at tackling (something I didn't think was as much the case for the corners) when plays arrived. 

From a pass-rushing standpoint, PSU was pretty solid at disrupting McCord but I would not say it was an overwhelming performance by any stretch. Chop Robinson made an impact in his snaps, like I mentioned, but the four man rush (especially post-Chop injury) wasn't doing a whole lot. There definitely were some moments. When I last saw Adisa Isaac, he was just a guy, but this rush to help create a sack caught my eye and his PFF grades are strong: 

EDGE #20 to the top

Former 5* Dani Dennis-Sutton has grown up quite a bit this season and had the nice rush that helped create the conditions for the strip sack TD that was called back: 

#33 to the top of the line

LB Curtis Jacobs knocks the ball free on that play and this is when it's important to point out the role that LBs play for PSU getting pressure. Manny Diaz likes to drop an EDGE and rush an LB, or bring an LB or two on a blitz as ways to challenge the opposing offensive lines. His most creative plays are out of that rush package that I mentioned earlier where you have three EDGE guys as the only down linemen, a couple LB/CB who rush, and then everyone else falling back. Here's one that got a sack: 

Arguably PSU's best pass rush events were in disguised pressures where you got a rusher matched up on one of OSU's RB in pass protection, as the RBs for the Buckeyes had a pretty poor day picking up those players, like Chip Trayanum in the above clip. But, despite the pressure that PSU did generate out of these looks, after the Robinson injury I did feel like their standard 4 man rushes looking to generate organic pressure were a bit lacking. They've crushed most teams they've played this season and the grades for their EDGE defenders are all phenomenal, but this one wasn't their best. Dennis-Sutton and Isaac both finished with pass-rush grades below 60 to PFF and that lines up with what I charted. Worth pointing out when the general consensus is that Ohio State's tackles are far from elite. 

All this put together, timely pass rush and generally good coverage overcoming occasional lulls in pressure and Kalen King lapses, did enough to slow the OSU passing game down. OSU had their big moments, most all to Marvin Harrison Jr. (he finished the game with 11 catches for 162 yards!), but McCord's final line was solid/good, not incredible. That's nice, especially because OSU didn't have a ton of rushing success, which allows us to pivot. 

In run defense, PSU had a very nice day, part of that being Ohio State's ongoing issues running the football this season (of note: TreVeyon Henderson also did not play in this game), but I did see some things I liked. First off, the linebackers were generally very responsible in run defense, making sure that even if the DL got beat, the run didn't get terribly far. OSU had nothing explosive on the ground in this game and almost everything at the second level was promptly tackled. Runs like this: 

That's Kobe King and Abdul Carter at the LB level poking their noses in, while DT Zane Durant eats a double. Durant is by far their most defensive tackle and a player who stood out in my review of the tape. This rush to TFL the run was a yowza: 

DT #28 vs. the LG

Durant's burst was noticeable and he stood out most because of how much better he was than all the other DTs. Nearly every time I noticed a DT getting good push against the interior OL I'd check the number and surprise, surprise, it was #28. Durant earned his star. The flip side of that, of course, is I think the other DTs are all just guys. Coziah Izzard is probably worse than just a guy, our lone cyan'd player, but the others, Hakeem Beamon and Dvon Ellies, yeah, just guys. This was probably OSU's best between-the-tackles run of the game and it came by ejecting Izzard and Beamon: 

If there is a vulnerability in the PSU defense besides Kalen King(??), it's probably this. It only popped up on a few snaps and if they ride Durant hard, it can disguise the issues in personnel, but whenever you get non-Durant DT snaps, I'd look at trying to feast on those other tackles. Because everyone else is pretty good in run defense. Again, some tackling issues in the secondary here and there, but the LBs were very disciplined and the EDGE guys helped out in the run effort too. Loved this one from Dixon and Dennis-Sutton:

Ohio State has a pretty good offense and this was a very respectable performance from the Penn State defense as a whole, but especially the run defense. They won their matchup. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

The Penn State defense poses by far the stiffest test for the Wolverine offense that they have seen all season. They are a very good unit, with talented players across the board and players who are performing well at every positional group. The pass rush component may be the most interesting for me, wanting to see how Michigan's offensive line holds up to the array of blitzes that Manny Diaz will toss at them and how the tackles will do against the EDGEs. Will Chop Robinson be healthy enough to make a big impact? How about the other EDGE guys and can they make a bigger dent as organic rushers than they did against Ohio State? 

Likewise, in the passing game, if Penn State is playing as much man as they did against Ohio State, this is a great game for the weapons Michigan has. Roman Wilson should be able to get open against anyone thanks to his speed, Colston Loveland on any linebacker or nickel they try is a mismatch, and then obviously Donovan Edwards. Yes, PSU has super athletic LBs, so if anyone has a shot to hang with Edwards, it's these guys, but I still think there's an opportunity to be exploited. How PSU chooses to use Kalen King is interesting to me and whether he'll draw a matchup with Wilson. Whether Michigan's receivers can get open consistently against this strong secondary will be a good litmus test for their abilities against harder competition. And on the ground, the interior OL against the non-Zane Durant DTs is something I'm keeping an eye on. It may end up being a bit of a rock fight at times, but JJ McCarthy's passing and running abilities could be the difference in giving Michigan a chance to split open the PSU defense in a way Kyle McCord's more limited profile couldn't.