Blue White Illustrated

began to stabilize. The Gophers hit their 228-yard average on the nose but weren't able to run away from the Lions and lost in overtime on a touchdown run by Barkley. Maryland had been averaging 300 rushing yards through four games but gained only 170 in a loss at Beaver Stadium. Then came Ohio State. Surely, the trend line would nose dive with the Nittany Lions set to face the Big Ten's top-ranked rushing offense. But it didn't. The Lions held the Buckeyes to 168 rush- ing yards, about half of their per-game average of 300.5. Heading into their Nov. 12 visit to Indi- ana, the Lions were allowing 166.3 yards per game on the ground to rank ninth in the conference – not great, but only be- cause they got off to such a poor start. Taking into account only the five wins leading up to Penn State's visit to Bloom- ington, its average was 128.4 yards per game, which would have ranked fifth in the Big Ten. Even better for Penn State, the im- provements against the run have been only one part of the story. The Nittany Lions have also been doing a good job of getting to opposing quarterbacks. Just look at their sack numbers: No Big Ten team had more sacks in October than Penn State's 13. As of this writing, the Lions had 27 sacks to rank second in the conference – no small accomplishment given that the three starters they lost in the off-sea- son accounted for 26 sacks last year. To optimize the line's performance, the Lions have had to do some tin- kering. Cothran sat out four games while serving a suspension, Sickels missed the first half of the Ohio State and Pur- due games due to his disciplinary issue, and Schwan and Cothren missed time be- cause of injuries. Those personnel losses, while temporary, posed significant early- season challenges for a team whose depth chart included five defensive linemen who were in their first season of action at Penn State. But Franklin and his staff had a plan to get the inexperienced players up to speed. That plan was to use a substitution pat- tern that paired newcomers with more- experienced teammates, or to use odd combinations in certain down-and-dis- tance situations and against opponents that overemphasized either the run or the pass. "We don't want to get in a situation where we're putting a young defensive tackle on the field at the same time as an- other young defensive tackle," Franklin said. "For example, say you have two starting D-tackles backed up by the two second-team guys. You prefer that your rotation is not one-to-one. The one side may be two-to-one, the other side may be three-to-one. … So you have a starter and backup on the field at the same time when you do get into rotation situations. "On top of that, we do have different looks. If it's a passing situation, we have a look where we're going to have three de- fensive ends on the field. One of those de- fensive ends is playing at the defensive tackle position. We also have situations where we're playing a team like Pitt that wants to run the ball, and we may have HOLDING PATTERN Ohio State wasn't able to keep Schwan and his fellow defen- sive linemen out of its backfield. After allow- ing five sacks in their first six games, the Buckeyes surrendered six in their 24-21 loss to PSU. Photo by Steve Manuel

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