Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/83706
Sean Lee and Dan Connor spearhead a defensive resurgence in Dallas COWBOY UP D | ALLAS – Dan Connor and Sean Lee have been teammates be- fore, when both were cutting their teeth as young linebackers at Penn State. Connor twice earned All-America honors, and the Wallingford, Pa., native left Happy Valley as the school's all-time leading tackler. In 2008, he headed to the NFL as a third-round pick of the Carolina Panthers. He spent four seasons there before signing with the Dallas Cowboys this past off-season. Lee's path has been similar. The product of Upper St. Clair High School near Pittsburgh played for the Nittany Lions from 2005 through 2009, and after a solid collegiate career, he followed Connor to the NFL in 2010 as a sec- ond-round draft pick of Dallas. Now, Lee and Connor are teammates again, and they're both starting line- backers in what is a deep and talented Dallas linebacker corps. For Lee, having another Penn State player in the room, especially someone he looked up to while playing for Joe Paterno, is great. "He was an awesome teammate in college and he's a great teammate now," Lee said of Connor. "I learned a lot from him – how to ap- proach a game, study, work hard, make yourself a better football player. We still have that great relationship where we feed off each other." Connor joined the Cowboys in March from Carolina, where he had experi- enced success when healthy. He played only one complete season as a Panther, and his best season, statistically, came when he finished with 75 tackles in 15 games in 2011 – not bad for someone whose NFL career started with a torn anterior cruciate ligament. Photos by James D. Smith "I enjoyed it," he said of his time in Carolina. "I was hurt my first year, so that was tough. Went through two dif- ferent coaching staffs, three or four different defensive staffs, and [I] got used to the turnover of the NFL. It helped me adjust, but it's always hard when you've got a whole new system. I had a great time there, I learned a lot and met a lot of great people." But when he was presented with an opportunity to come to Dallas, consid- ered an up-and-coming defense under coordinator Rob Ryan, Connor jumped at the chance. "It's been good," he said. "It's been quick. I moved down quick to try and get acclimated. I'm having a good time. [Having Lee as a teammate] helped a lot, especially in Rob Ryan's defense. It's complicated, and there's a lot to it. So having a guy like Sean, who knows it inside and out, was huge early on to get the ter- minology and philosophy down." Helping a fellow member of the Penn State family acclimate to his new sur- roundings is something Lee was glad to do. "Like everything, it's a new situ- ation," Lee said. "You try to help your friends and teammates as much as you can by just showing them the way that we do things. He fit in great just because he's such a hard worker." Besides having the shared experience of playing under Paterno at Penn State, the talented duo now shares the bond of playing under Ryan. Ryan's dad is Buddy Ryan, architect of one of the best defenses in NFL history: the 1985 Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears. And like his father, Rob Ryan is one of the NFL's most colorful personalities.