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P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> Obviously, we had our moments in both of those games where we could have turned a play or two over. There's a pick that went right through Christian Campbell's hands that we thought he had. We were that close. We were one throw away from potentially winning those games with a throw in each game. So, is it broke? No. But is there some- thing we can tweak that helps us? Every year you're learning things that you can do better as a coach. I kick myself in the butt over both of those games. Not to take anything away from them, but I just believe I could have done a better job, particularly in the second half of Ohio State. So we'll look to correct that and we're working that way. Someone was telling me that Bill Be- lichick made a comment similar to this, that you still find yourself every spring and every camp going back to the begin- ning with your group. Whether you have five guys back, whether you have 10 starters back, you're going back to the beginning because you've got new peo- ple in new roles, expanded roles. You're teaching concepts, you're teaching ba- sics and fundamentals. Because if you're not good at that stuff, the rest of it does- n't matter. You try to put the cart in front of the horse and, well heck, "We've been in the defense three years now, we don't have to worry about this, this and this." No. It doesn't work that way. At least it doesn't work that way for us. So we'll still ground zero it like we did this spring and bring these guys along with some tweaks to last year's package that we think can help us. BWI With the young players, do you need to simplify anything schematically to get them into the right places so that they can use their abilities? PRY You can get guys to operate within the defense on a vanilla basis, and then also on a more sophisticated basis. What I mean by that is, there are maybe some advanced coaching points that they can't grasp right now. You're giving them A and B to this call, even though the guy last year knew A, B, C and D, but you can still make the call and function in it. Maybe what we lose in the intricacy of it, we gain in the explosive manner. It's also been my experience that sometimes you back off and you vanilla it up a little bit and you find out you're better for it. Not just the new guys or the guys who are struggling, but the guys around them, the older guys. It hap- pened to us in 2016 when we had all those injuries at linebacker and really had to vanilla things up and we were able to beat some pretty good folks with some guys who people probably would have said weren't good enough to do that. Everybody's game elevated with it being a little simpler. I think that's always the challenge as a coach: Your players need to be able to ex- ecute the defense. How you get them to do that is, to me, the root of what we do schematically as coaches. It's how we can LETTERMEN RETURNING 21 DE Torrence Brown, Ryan Buchholz, Yetur Gross-Matos, Shareef Miller Shane Simmons, Shaka Toney DT Kevin Givens, Ellison Jordan, Robert Windsor LB Cam Brown, Jake Cooper, Dae'Lun Darien (as WR), Koa Farmer, Jarvis Miller CB Tariq Castro-Fields, Zech McPhearson, Amani Oruwariye SAF Ayron Monroe, Nick Scott, Garrett Taylor, Lamont Wade (as CB) LETTERMEN LOST 11 DE Colin Castagna DT Tyrell Chavis, Curtis Cothran, Parker Cothren LB Manny Bowen, Jason Cabinda, Brandon Smith CB Christian Campbell, Grant Haley SAF Marcus Allen, Troy Apke STARTERS RETURNING 3 >> Ryan Buchholz (6 starts in 2017), Koa Farmer (13), Shareef Miller (12) OTHERS WITH STARTING EXPERIENCE 7 >> Cam Brown (2 career starts), Torrence Brown (7), Jake Cooper (3), Kevin Givens (12), John Reid (16), Nick Scott (2), Robert Windsor (1) STARTERS LOST 8 >> Curtis Cothran (13), Parker Cothren (13), Manny Bowen (9), Jason Cabinda (13), Christian Campbell (13), Grant Haley (13), Marcus Allen (13), Troy Apke (12) D E F E N S E F A S T F A C T S POINTS/GAME 16.5 (2nd Big Ten; 7th FBS) YDS/GAME 329.5 (5th; 17th) RUSHING YDS/GAME 118.0 (5th; 14th) PASSING YDS/GAME 211.5 (8th; 47th) PASS EFFICIENCY 114.9 (6th; 21st) FIRST DOWNS/GAME 17.4 (6th; T-25th) 3RD-DOWN CONVERSION PCT. 34.9 (7th; T-35th) 2017 STATISTICS

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