Previously: PSU Offense 

Yesterday we looked over the PSU offense, which has had trouble running the football. Today we look over the PSU defense, which has had troubles stopping the run, but the picture overall is rather muddled. They've pitched a shutout against a B1G opponent, yet let Illinois run it down their throat to death in a different week. What is the real Nittany Lions defense? Let's investigate. 

The Film: We're again sticking with the OSU game for this. I know that Ohio State has a vastly superior offense to Michigan (and to just about everyone in America), but our options were limited because of PJ Mustipher's injury, which occurred against Iowa. That leaves us with only the Illinois, Ohio State, and Maryland games as potential usable options, and even though OSU is a better offense than Michigan, I still think they're a better fit than Maryland (and their supremely weak OL) and Illinois, who refused to throw the football to a comical extent. So we're rolling with the Buckeyes, but are going to remain cognizant about the issues in comparability that pop up. 

Personnel: Seth's chart. 

Personnel: PSU's defensive ends are the strength of the defense, with Arnold Ebiketie on one side and Jesse Luketa on the other, both of whom are great players. Nick Taburton and Smith Vilbert (great name) are the reserve pass rushers who rotate in, but the big dogs get most of the attention. On the contrary, it's the interior defensive line that is the weakness of the defense since the injury of PJ Mustipher. The reason the Mustipher loss is so massive is because while Derrick Tangelo can hang in there as a nose tackle, Dvon Ellies and Coziah Izzard are both horrendous tackles and have emerged as a major weak spot. 

At the LB level, PSU runs out returning starters Ellis Brooks and Brandon Smith, pairing them with new starter Curtis Jacobs. Those three rarely rotate, with Charlie Katshir occasionally getting in, but otherwise it's the three LB starters getting almost all of the snaps. 

The secondary is similarly stable, with forever Nittany Lion Tariq Castro-Fields starting at one corner spot for the 17th straight year (not exact numbers), while Joey Porter Jr. starts at the other corner position. Daequan Hardy is the nickel and then Johnny Dixon is the fourth corner who rotates in occasionally when they need extra DB bodies. Jaquan Brisker is another star at the SS position, someone who is getting legitimate NFL Draft hype. Ji'Ayir Brown is the other starting safety, getting the start at the FS position. Jon Sutherland and Keaton Ellis are the third and fourth options on the depth chart, but Brisker and Brown get the most snaps by a considerable margin. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Good defense? Or bad defense?]

Base Set: Penn State operates in a base 4-3, which remains pretty consistent in terms of personnel, but the manner in which they line those pieces up varies widely depending on the given play. Brent Pry presented a lot of different defensive alignments to try and disguise pressure against a young QB like CJ Stroud. Here's what I would call the "base set" though: 

Four man DL, with both ends standing up. Three LBs at their standard level, two corners shadowing OSU receivers, and then two safeties high, although one is not as high, since PSU (in their Cover 3 alignment) likes to roll one safety down into the box. 

On longer down and distance situations, PSU took a defensive lineman off the field and replaced him with a DB, giving you more of a 3-3-5 look: 

I'm not sure how much of this was countering a spread passing offense like OSU, but it was the other alignment worth knowing besides their 4-3 front. 

Man or zone coverage: PSU runs a base Cover 3, although they integrate Cover 2 as well, which was once the base coverage that Pry used. Both obviously place the Nittany Lions into the zone category more than man. 

Pressure: PSU was very blitzy in this one, rushing more than four defenders on 46% of the plays that I tracked. They were very much a rush 4/rush 5 team though, sending a lot of blitzes but very few six or seven man pressure packages like Indiana did last week in FFFF. On the flip side, PSU rushed only three on 10% of the snaps I tracked. 

Dangerman: We're going to go with Jesse Luketa, even though there are plenty of good options (Brisker, Ebiketie, Brooks), simply because I felt Luketa had the best game of any PSU defender in the game I saw. He's a hybrid DE/LB who they have optimized as an edge defender. Like most edges, he can rush the passer: 

DE #40 to bottom of the DL

Luketa was a key cog in what was a very effective PSU pass rush in this game, forcing Stroud to rush or abort plays like the one above. Here's another example: 

DE #40 to top of the DL

But where I thought Luketa was best was in run defense, where he (and Brooks, Ebiketie, and Smith) helped paper over the interior DL weakness to help stymy (for awhile) an excellent OSU rushing attack. Here he is with Brandon Smith making a shoestring stop: 

DE #40 to top of the screen

And another instance in the red zone, where Luketa helps make a big stop on third down: 

Luketa is one of several high impact pieces on this defense, but his ability to both stop the run and rush the passer, in addition to drop into coverage when needed, makes him one of the most dangerous and versatile players for the Nittany Lions. Hence the Dangerman label. 

Overall

So how do we unpack this very confusing Penn State defense? A defense that simultaneously got paved all the way to New Jersey by Illinois, yet had one of the best defensive performances anyone has had against OSU in several seasons only a week later. First and foremost, as previously stated, there are some very good players on this Penn State defense. I think Ellis Brooks is a great linebacker. His run fits were also very sharp:

MLB #13 

To that point, much like what we saw with Luketa, the primary reason that the Nittany Lions were not paved off the field by Ohio State like everyone thought they would be was the play of their ends and linebackers, who identified holes and crashed down on the run with a vengeance to make some really nice plays right while the DT levee broke. Here's an example of such a play: 

On that play you see Coziah Izzard (DT #99) get totally blown up, but the great play from LB Curtis Jacobs stops a play that had a chance to be huge dead in its tracks. One play later it's Luketa stopping a 2nd & short run: 

These back seven + ends were needed to stop the run because, despite a strong stop to the game, the DT vs. OSU OL mismatch was very evident. Both DTs Derrick Tangelo and Dvon Ellies get blown up here, and that allows TreVeyon Henderson to be off to the races, with help from very poor LB play by Brandon Smith as well: 

Penn State's defensive front started strong, but was eroded as the game went along. The PSU run defense isn't as bad as it was against Illinois, when the Illini rushed a staggering 67 times for 357 yards (!!). If their run defense was really that bad they would've gone 2-10 this season. That was an aberration, a Frames Janklin specialty where the coaches fall asleep at the wheel (or are focused on the USC job) and don't bother to coach. But the underlying point— that the DTs are a weakness— is true. Michigan has to target them. 

That's because I thought PSU's pass rush was very good against what's supposed to be a strong OSU offensive line, generating pressure not just from Luketa but also Arnold Ebiketie: 

DE #17 to top of the screen

Stroud is able to complete it there, but the pressure from #17 was coming consistently. Blitzes also worked to good effect to bother Stroud and force the QB to waver and depart from his rhythm: 

The coverage also was very good. Ohio State found holes in the PSU zone, but their performance was far from the season normal. The Buckeyes got one big play over the top, but Brent Pry will take that trade off every day. The one big play was a coverage bust by (surprisingly) Brisker (also, notice the effective pass rush *again*): 

But outside of that, any OSU passing offense was limited to 5-15 yard pickups on mesh concepts, post routes, or slants to the middle of the field. The corners were good more times than not, with good coverage here from Tariq Castro-Fields: 

Penn State has the 7th best defense in the country (per SP+) for a reason: they have fearsome ends, solid LBs (with one playmaker), a star safety, two dependable cover corners, and can feature tricky blitzes, while being coached by a smart coordinator. Erase the Illinois game from your memory, because this shouldn't be a pushover. 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

The Wolverines need to target the defensive tackles because that's the weakness in the defense. This is not MSU, where the Wolverines should be able to move the ball easily down the field through the air. The pressure will come, the coverage will be good, and Cade McNamara has to be ready to face it. But the DTs are the big question, because if Michigan can move the ball effectively on the ground, everything else opens up. That will require good blocking, particularly on the edges, where the ends will try to crash around to cover up for the interior problems. Hitting a big play or two off the run would help too.