Blue White Illustrated

April 2016

Penn State Sports Magazine

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Tyrell Chavis (6-5, 305) and Brenon Thri? (6-3, 285), and freshmen Ellison Jordan (6-0, 280) and Antonio Shelton (6-3, 290). Chavis and Thri? are ex- pected to compete with Windsor and Carter for the backup defensive tackle spots behind Cothren and White, who are the projected starters at the one- and three-technique positions, respectively. Jordan and Shelton are likely to redshirt this coming fall. There's been a lot of talk about Penn State's supposed lack of depth, but with the arrival of this year's recruiting class, the Nittany Lions have su>cient man- power. What they need is more experi- ence. In my opinion, for Penn State to continue to perform well up front, Chavis will have to be part of the four- man rotation, Windsor will have to emerge as a solid backup to Cothren at the one-technique position, and Cothren and White will need to develop into a consistent starting defensive tackle tandem. One wild card here is redshirt fresh- man Ryan Buchholz. A four-star defen- sive end in Penn State's Class of 2015, Buchholz is seen by the coaching sta= as a candidate for playing time at the three-technique tackle spot that Zettel manned the past two seasons. But his listed weight is 254 pounds, and even if he added a few pounds during winter workouts, he's still got some growing to do before he'll be ready to move inside. He may get some reps at defensive tackle this spring, but it's still looking as though he will make his debut at defen- sive end. It will be interesting to see how every- thing comes together during the spring and summer. But no matter what hap- pens at this position group, I think it would be unrealistic to expect Penn State to simply pick up where it le? o= last fall. Johnson and Zettel are going to be hard to replace. DEFENSIVE END SCHOLARSHIP PLAYERS Evan Schwan (6-6, 252, Sr.), Curtis Cothran (6-5, 262, R-Jr.), Garrett Sickels (6-4, 251, R-Jr.), Torrence Brown (6-3, 257, R- So.), Ryan Buchholz (6-6, 260, R-Fr.), Kevin Givens (6-1, 267, R-Fr.), Shareef Miller (6-5, 248, R-Fr.) OUTLOOK Penn State will enter spring practice with seven scholarship defensive ends, so depth shouldn't be an issue. There's also a bit more experience here than at defensive tackle, with one starter returning in Sickels. Still, there's no question that Nassib will be tough to replace. He was named the Big Ten's De- fensive Player of the Year and that recognition could not have been more richly deserved. Brown is the favorite to succeed Nassib at the weakside defensive end spot. As a redshirt freshman last season, he played in all 13 games, posting 11 tackles, in- cluding 5.5 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks. Cothran and Miller will likely do battle for the backup spot. Cothran had an im- pressive redshirt sophomore season, seeing action in all 13 games and

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