Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/541265
skill set to play corner, safety or nickel, very similar to Adrian Amos. Lucas is a vocal leader, and I feel like he and Mar- cus Allen will give us as good of a safety tandem as there is in the Big Ten. But, yes, to answer your question. It was as much of a vote of confidence as it was [an indication of] how confident we felt in the performance of Grant Haley and Trevor Williams last year. That's not to say we don't have a lot of confidence in Malik Golden and Troy Apke, as well, who are incumbent backup safeties. I also feel very, very good about the third, fourth and fifth corners with Amani Oruwariye, Christian Campbell and Daquan Worley, who is going to be in a competitive situa- tion because we're very excited about the incoming corners, too. We think John Reid and Garrett Taylor are guys who have the mindset and the maturity and the skill set to come in and compete. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say Anthony Zettel and Austin Johnson are toward the top of everyone's Top 22 board. We put them on the cover of this magazine. Did we make the right choice? You got it. Zettel, A.J., Lucas and Ny- eem Wartman were Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4. Some experience right there, I'd say, guys who've played a lot of football and made a lot of plays for us. Zettel was ac- tually unanimous, by the way. What kind of flexibility does it give your defense having two guys like that in the middle? It's exciting. We have a good situation at D-tackle. Those guys as starters com- plement each other well. Austin is the prototypical NFL D-tackle. He's over 300 pounds, he can move well, he's strong, hard to push and he controls the line of scrimmage. And Zettel has as much explosiveness and twitch as you want in the 4-3, where you're looking for a get-off front. Not a front that gets off blockers, but penetrates and gets off on the snap of the ball. He's as disruptive as any D-tackle in college football. In addi- tion to that, we're extremely deep at D- tackle. Tarow Barney and Parker Cothren could start on a lot of Big Ten teams, I think, and that's exciting to me. To me, part of the success we had on de- fense last year – a great part of it – was because our front seven was really solid. Our front seven was legit. Three defensive ends are gone from that squad, but it sounds like that unit had a solid spring. Is that how you would assess it? I feel very good about the defensive end position. I think Carl Nassib is a sleeper, a late bloomer who has grown into a big-bodied guy. He's a [former] nonscholarship player who has just con- tinued to grow and grow and grow and has unique athletic ability and length. He's 6-7, 270. Garrett Sickels is a highly recruited guy in Hack's class who is real- ly competitive and has great explosive- ness and get-off. Those two guys will be real good at the D-end position. Behind them, we feel very, very good about the spring that Curtis Cothran and Evan Schwan had. They both did very well in the spring game, and that was a real boost going into the summer. Another guy who was consistent throughout the course of the spring, although I don't re- call a lot of big plays from him in the spring game, was Torrence Brown. He is a guy who we have a lot of confidence in. He redshirted last year and really ex- celled on the scout team for us. Then you have guys like Ryan Buch- holz coming in, whom James Franklin referred to as a jumbo athlete. What would a true freshman have to do to make an impact, or do you think the odds are stacked against them be- cause of the depth right now at D- end? I don't. I think we've made it clear that the best players play, regardless of class, regardless of where they're from. Ka- monte Carter, Ryan Buchholz, Shareef Miller, Robert Windsor, Kevin Givens – go right on down the line. I feel like we had a pretty good windfall with the de- fensive line recruiting class last year. Those guys are all coming in with the mindset that they're going to compete, and they'll be given every opportunity, especially at the defensive end position. I think we have to do a better job of play- ing more guys. We're not afraid to play nine or 10 guys at that position. I want to ask about Ben Kline... He got some reps this spring [at middle linebacker]. He was unable to do some live things. I think he had to scrape a lit- tle bit of the rust off, and it took a minute to understand how we operate in relation to previous staffs and things like that, but Ben and I have a great relation- ship. From his teammates and this coaching staff, there is a tremendous amount of respect for him as a leader and as a person. I think we're all cheer- ing for him. We're hoping his senior year can be the way he wants it to be and he can be an integral part of our success. Then you look at the Will [linebacker position], and two guys I'm really excit- P R E V I E W