COVER STORY
MASS
EFFECT
Eager to take his place among
the Lions' all-time greats,
standout defensive tackle
DaQuan Jones wins by losing
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D
aQuan Jones is a pretty big guy. Admittedly, pretty big is
not the most useful adjective with which to describe a
major-college defensive lineman these days. Defensive
linemen are pretty big by definition, and that's been the
case at Penn State since 1997, when the program permanently abandoned its small-is-beautiful philosophy
after two Michigan State tailbacks surpassed the 200yard plateau in the same game.
But there's pretty big and there's really big, and that distinction,
subtle though it may seem, matters quite a bit. Even in the trenches of the brutally physical Big Ten, there's a point at which additional bulk becomes unnecessary and even counterproductive.
Jones reached that point following his junior season at Penn
State. On the depth chart that the Nittany Lions issued prior to
the 2012 finale against Wisconsin, he was listed at 324 pounds,
and even that was a lowball estimate. Jones says he was at 327 at
the end of the season, then shot up to about 335 after the calorieburning grind of practices and games ended in late November. For
