Blue White Illustrated

December 2021

Penn State Sports Magazine

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1 0 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 1 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M A fter watching Penn State senior wideout Jahan Dotson shred his Maryland defense on Nov. 6, setting a new school record for single- game receiving yards and finding the end zone three times along the way, Terrapins coach Mike Locksley offered a cut-and-dried explanation for what he saw. "He ran slant routes for 242 yards against man coverage," Locksley said. Maryland's man coverage scheme stood no chance against Dotson, who accumulated 125 yards after the catch on 11 receptions. Dotson picked up more than a third of his prodigious yardage total on an 86-yard touchdown catch early in the fourth quarter that gave Penn State a lead it would eventually convert into a 31-14 win. The Terrapins' defensive approach had been burned into Dotson's mem- ory, and not just because it was on the scouting report. Maryland had relied on the same scheme last season in a 35-19 victory at Beaver Stadium. Dotson had 123 yards and a touch- down in that game, but it wasn't enough. In this year's rematch, he nearly doubled that total. "We knew the coverages they were going to give us," he said. "Last year, they played us man the entire game, so we kind of took that personal, took that on as wide receivers. "That's a wide receiver's dream, man coverage. We weren't able to execute last year, we weren't able to get enough points on the board. We kind of took that on [our] shoulders. When you're one-on-one, you've got to win. That's what you do as a wide receiver. You've got to separate." Dotson did just that, over and over again, until Penn State's single-game receiving record of 216 yards, set by Deon Butler against Northwestern in 2006, had been eclipsed. Jahan Dotson's Return Pays Big Dividends DAVID ECKERT | DAVIDECKERT98@GMAIL.COM NEWS & NOTES Dotson, who opted to come back for his senior season after mulling an early entry into the NFL, set a Penn State record with his 242 yards receiving against Maryland on Nov. 6. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL

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