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| P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> ometimes, you just get lucky. You call a stunt, you slant through a gap, the other team has dialed up the wrong play for your defensive align- ment, and you end up with an unblocked path to the football. Just like that, you've schemed your way to a TFL. Yetur Gross- Matos has been involved in a few of those types of plays this season. But most of the time, you have to work for it. You have to fight off a block. You have to chase down a ball carrier who's headed in the opposite direction, and then you have to put him on the ground. Gross-Matos has been involved in those kinds of plays, too, and to hear coach James Franklin tell it, that's where he's really shined as a sopho- more defensive end at Penn State. "Yetur is a guy who doesn't know any- thing else but full speed," Franklin said. "With some guys you have to coach that, and they figure it out later in their careers. Some guys, you fight with them their whole career, and they never practice as hard as they should practice, and then it never translates [into games] and they never end up maximizing their potential or their abil- ity. And then other guys just naturally have a great motor. "I think Yetur has got a great motor." That motor has propelled Gross-Matos to the top of the Big Ten's statistical charts, and it's helped Penn State field one of the most quarterback-unfriendly defenses in the Big Ten this season. Despite losing two starting defensive ends to health concerns in a little over a year's time – Torrence Brown suffered a career-ending knee injury in September 2017, and Ryan Buchholz was forced to give up football this past August due to recurring back problems – the Nittany Lions had totaled 34 sacks through their first 10 games to lead the Big Ten. They had also amassed 74 tackles for loss to lead the league in that de- partment, too. Numbers like those are never just the result of a one-man ef- fort, and while Gross-Matos has been the breakout star of Penn State's defensive line this year with eight sacks and 15.5 tackles for loss, he's hardly been the only Nittany Lion to spend a sub- stantial portion of the season in the oppo- nent's backfield. Shaka Toney set a school record at Indiana on Oct. 20 by coming up CUT CHASE S In the midst of a breakout season, sophomore DE Yetur Gross-Matos has spearheaded a fierce pass rush that has fueled Penn State's defensive rise IN THE GRASP Gross- Matos pursues Kent State quarterback Woody Barrett during Penn State's 63-10 victory over the Golden Flashes earlier this season. The sophomore defensive end had eight sacks head- ing into Penn State's regu- lar-season road finale against Rutgers. Photo by Steve Manuel C O V E R S T O R Y TO THE

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