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DAQUAN JONES BY THE NUMBERS YR TK SOLO AS FR FC I SACK TFL 2010 6 3 3 0 0 0 1-4 2-7 2011 8 4 4 0 0 0 0-0 0-0 2012 22 8 14 1 0 0 0.5-3 2-6 2013* 25 16 9 0 0 0 2-16 5.5-22 TOTAL 61 31 30 1 0 0 3.5-23 9.5-35 * Includes first four games of season Tim Owen eat salad and drink water. It was pretty tough, but I got used to it after a while. " Jones' willpower was enhanced by the knowledge that there was a significant payoff awaiting him if he could just resist all those fattening foods in favor of salads and turkey sandwiches. At 335 pounds, he was too heavy to fulfill his potential. But at 315? Different story. So he took the list that Clark had given him and "adapted it to food that I like and started cutting down my portions. It worked out great. I lost a lot of weight from December to now. " Twenty pounds, or thereabouts. Jones began the 2013 season weighing 315 pounds, and the weight loss, coupled with a move from the one-technique defensive tackle position to the three-technique spot, has turned him into a major playmaker for the Penn State defense. In the Lions' opener against Syracuse, Jones was the team's leading tackler – a rarity for an interior lineman – with nine stops. Included in that total was a fourth-quarter sack in which he overpowered center Macky MacPherson, a three-year starter and Rimington Award watch-lister, and guard Rob Trudo to drop Drew Allen for a 9-yard loss. A week later against Eastern Michigan, he finished with nine tackles, including a sack and two tackles for loss. Those games set the stage for what many in the PSU program see as a breakout season for the senior from Johnson City, N.Y. "We use the phrase 'next level' when we talk about football, and he is a prime example of a guy who did it, coach Bill " O'Brien said. "He played very physically in the [Syracuse] game and made a lot of really key stops for us. He had a fantastic sack, where he split a double-team. He's going to be tough to handle this year, because he's powerful, he's strong, he's smart, and he's worked extremely hard to get to this point. " Has he ever. By Jones' own admission, nothing has come easy – not football, not school, not life. He grew up in Johnson City, a town of about 15,000 that straddles the banks of the Susquehanna River, just west of Binghamton. Its size and location might call to mind picturesque waterfront scenes and upstate New York charm, but it has one of the highest crime rates in the country for a town of its population. According to neighborhood-scout.com, Johnson City residents have a 1 in 16 chance of becoming a victim of a property crime or a violent crime. Maybe under different circumstances, Jones could have gotten swept up in the town's crime problem. It happened to lots of others, including many of the kids he hung out with in grade school. But he said he was never tempted to follow them, re- alizing early on that his friends were headed down a path he couldn't follow. "We grew apart, just because they got into the wrong stuff, he said. "I had to " buckle down in school and I kinda had to adjust my friend group. I wanted to get out of there and make my family proud – my mom and my baby brother. So I worked my tail off so that we can live good." That work began in earnest at Johnson City High, where he became the No. 2 offensive lineman as rated by Rivals.com during his senior season. He signed with PSU in 2010 and played his way out of a planned redshirt that fall, appearing in nine games on the defensive line. He took part in every game the next year, and it was then, playing alongside Still and Hill, that he began to truly appreciate the opportunity he had given himself for a better life. "I had made it to college, but at the same time, I had to do something to get a good degree and a good job and help my family out," he said. "I didn't realize until watching Devon and Jordan that I could measure my ability against theirs. It started clicking. By my junior year, I was focused, but I wasn't completely focused. There was stuff I could have done to prepare myself better. " Jones started 11 games as a junior but was dissatisfied with his performance. The big plays that he yearned to make seemed to continually elude him. He chased his share of quarterbacks but rarely caught up with them. He would barrel into the backfield only to see the running back evade his grasp. Jones finished the

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